The Endgame Of The Gods
by James Jago
Summary: You'd think that once I'd got killed saving the universe, they'd leave me in peace," Dave grumbled to Lyra. "But nooo..."
1. Prologue

Usual disclaimers, and apologies to Philip Pullman for doing anything so ghastly as this to his characters. Thanks to Dave, Danny, Kaisermonkey and Ceres for their encouragement and praise for the last two stories. Hope this one's as good.  
  
Okay, quick recap for those just joining us. In The Silver Bird, Mary Malone devises a means of travelling between worlds safely. However, it requires a great deal of speed. Enter David Marshall-Savage, former naval aviator, Falklands veteran and old buddy of John Parry. In a series of circumstances too complicated to go into in much detail here [you're better off reading the first two stories, really], our heroes end up causing a train wreck, getting mixed up in a war and storming the last redoubt of the Magisterium. Asriel makes a rather brief appearance, but the question of how he escaped certain doom is never properly answered on account of him getting shot within a few paragraphs. Dave, who does most of the narrating, also succeeds in getting off with Elaine.  
  
In The Twisted Cross, Will, Lyra and their comrades do battle with Nazis from another dimension, and also with Mrs Coulter, who is mysteriously not dead either. She eventually gets her comeuppance, but not before she has contrived to get Dave and Elaine killed. This is pretty much where we take up the thread in this concluding installment.  
  
Lee Scroesby approached the hunched figure sitting on a rock by the lakeside, with some trepidation. Whilst he was normally a placid man, when David Marshall-Savage was riled, he didn't go in for half measures. The mess he'd made of Asriel's face bore testimony to this.  
  
"Hey, buddy."  
  
Dave looked up, and smiled slightly. "Hi. Come to commiserate?"  
  
"Yeah, sorta. I mean, that was one hell of a thing to do." The former naval aviator nodded mutely.  
  
"Well, John was there first, even if he DID spend most of their marriage several hundred miles away up some mountain or somewhere. And he always was better looking than me." Instinctively he reached for his inside pocket, but reminded himself that he was now dead and no longer had access to cigarettes. At least Elaine had stopped nagging him about THAT.  
  
Dave seemed rather more cheerful than Lee had anticipated. He idly tossed a stone into the water, thinking. "It'll be a lot more peaceful, anyway," he mused. Lee tried hard not to smile. Elaine Parry's temper had been sufficient to give Marissa Coulter GBH of the earholes earlier that morning. She also had a way of treating Dave as if he was an autistic four year-old. Women had never been the most easily satisfied lifeforms on the face of the earth, in Lee's experience at least, but Elaine was extreme even by his standards. He wondered just how detrimental this would be to Dave's day to day afterlife.  
  
"I probably shouldn't be," Dave admitted, "but quite frankly, I'm just slightly relieved. Eleven years of near-constant nagging, henpecking and browbeating -albeit in an affectionate sort of way... I think- are finally at an end, and John gets to put up with it for a while." He grinned. "I think this is going to be a good laugh."  
  
Lee shook his head. This wasn't the first time he'd seen this kind of thing happen. Even people from cultures which permitted polygamy -Asia, the Middle East, Utah- had their share of soap-opera moments. It all seemed a great deal funnier when it wasn't somebody you'd come to know and like.  
  
The two men were roused from their conversation by a sudden commotion. Two angels had appeared from somewhere. They appeared slightly different, in that they wore black robes instead of the poncy white floaty things that they traditionally wore. The harpies flocked around, raising an almighty commotion, but were knocked aside. The angels landed, snatched Asriel and Marissa Coulter and disappeared.  
  
"What the HELL was that?" Lee yelled.  
  
"Somebody else's problem, that's what," Dave replied, trying to appear nonchalant. It was nothing to do with him. Nothing. He'd done his bit, and got himself killed fighting Nazis from a parallel universe. Will and Lyra could look after it. They'd saved a few universes in their time; surely one or two more wouldn't hurt...?  
  
//Oh, BALLS. Who am I kidding?// Dave sighed mentally. The implications of the suddeen removal of two people from the world of the dead who shouldn't even have been in a position to die in the first place were not lost on him. Nobody had ever figured out how they escaped the Rift into which they had been flung with Metatron, but it seemed a safe bet that he had something to do with this. The upshot of all this was that Metatron was at large, and likely to be embarking on some mad scheme to take over at least one universe.  
  
Dave had a horrible feeling that his chances of Resting In Peace were getting rather slim. 


	2. Here We Go Again

Whilst Dave is worrying about the destruction of his peaceful existence in the afterlife, Will and Lyra have been contacted by their insane friend from the Battle of Bolvangar, notorious mercenary and least likeliest top performer in the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Jonathan West, who wants them to help him out with something...  
  
"Why in the name of God did I let you talk me into this?" Will wondered aloud, glancing around to make sure nobody was following them. "What does he want us for, anyhow? If he wants me to fly air support for his latest gung-ho escapade then I shall tell him where to insert it."  
  
"Oh, come ON," Lyra replied. "Aren't you after a little excitement after five years of nothing but the old routine?"  
  
"Let me think... No! Fighting Nazis from another dimension gave me all the excitement I'll ever need in my life in less than a week." Five years of peace and quiet had been very welcome to him. William Parry considered himself well and truly OD'd on excitement. He'd prevented a coup d'etat against God, travelled to thirty seven alternate universes and battled the forces of evil more often than he cared to recall, and all before the age of thirty. Frankly, he was more than happy to stop. He had a wife and family, a mortagage, and a garden shed. He bought his furniture from Ikea and listened to Radio 4. He strove to live as normal a lifestyle as a decorated Navy pilot whose wife was from an alternate dimension could possibly manage.  
  
But now he was in Moscow, at the request of a man who was wanted by law enforcement agencies in most of the western hemisphere.  
  
The Young Guns are a book or two all in themselves [Author's note: If I'm as good at this writing lark as I like to think then one day soon they will be]. Jonathan West had achieved notoriety at the tender age of 17 when he, his girlfriend and the mob of ne'er-do-wells he'd picked up somewhere had begun a spree of freelance prison breakouts in Great Britain. Their more widely published exploits included wrecking a death row in Louisiana (the US government had quietly dropped pursuit of the various warrants for their arrest when it was discovered that only one in five of the inmates were actually legally deserving of the death penalty and nearly a quarter were completely innocent; Michael Moore had a field day over this) and breaking up a child-kidnap ring in Russia, where they were now national heroes. Many experts agree -rightly- that they also had a hand in President Putin's dramatic resignation speech; the handgun against his head as he spoke to the cameras was John's sense of humour through and through, at any rate. It is less widely known that the so-called Young Guns were hired by Will's late stepfather for the almighty shootout in the Arctic that finally flattened the Magisterium. They turned up along with a Moscow street gang, an attack helicopter and crew and some former 101st Airbourne personnel to deal with the unpleasant business with Nazis from another dimension as well. They were now acting as go-anywhere, troubleshooting mercenaries jocularly referred to as the J-Team, and running a successful sideline business smuggling would-be immigrants into Britain as well. This last was more of an ideological issue on John's part than anything else, and an unusual degree of effort was being put into ensuring that the passengers arrived in Britain safely and without being found.  
  
Will looked at his watch. "Pickup should be here any minute. I've still got a horrible feeling he'll try to convince us to fly clapped out MiGs and blow stuff up for some Russian gangster with... Oh, that'll be it." A black MPV pulled up near the airport taxi rank, and a man Will didn't recognise got out. "Mark and Elisabeth Ransom? Hi, I'm Eddie Meacom. John couldn't get away to meet you in person; he's negotiating for the loan of some military hardware for a job in Bosnia."  
  
"Bosnia. Right," Will said slowly. Hardline Milosovites were waging a major campaign against the Muslim minority, and the UN response wasn't materialising as quickly as it ought. The major players were dragging their heels about committing troops to stop a war nobody cared about in a country that hardly anybody had even heard of, so evidently the more progressive elements had decided to take matters into their own hands.  
  
The thought of John and his band of loose cannons unleashed on an already chaotic country made Will's blood run cold. This meant explosions, and he'd had his fill of those.  
  
"What does he want us to do?" Lyra asked, raising one eyebrow. Meacom smiled faintly.  
  
"Ever flown a MiG-29?"  
  
Will sighed deeply. "No. No, no, NO. Abso-bloody-lutely... Good God!"  
  
Meacom closed the briefcase full of $20 bills. "John said you'd need a bit of persuasion."  
  
"Well, you've got my attention. Let's go."  
  
They drove to a small warehouse complex outside the city, where the J-Team had their headquarters. It was, incidentally, the very place where the Young Guns had done battle with the Mafia all those years ago. A varied collection of Russian armoured vehicles was parked outside, along with two Hueys.  
  
"So they finally replaced the one that got shot down," Lyra observed. "Who's the new pilot?"  
  
"Isobel. John's in charge of our latest acquisition. There it is now, in fact." Eddie pointed to an Mi-28 'Havoc' gunship that was settling in on the roof of the offices.  
  
"Bloody hell," Will concluded. "What else has he got hold of?"  
  
"Two Ilyushin-76s and an Antonov-124, and four MiG-29s for escort purposes. We're recruiting pilots for those as I speak, and you two are top of John's candidate list. Your old colleague Jack McAllister's number three, and number four is my brother-in-law Yuri; John likes to recruit friends and relatives wherever possible."  
  
Will nodded without really hearing. Can we do this?he asked himself. Can we run the risk of leaving the twins without their parents?Their two children were staying with Dave's parents. The original plan was to name them David and John if they were boys, Mary and Elaine if girls. In the event they wound up with one boy and one girl, named David Jonathan and Elaine Mary Parry respectively. The Ransom surname, adopted as a cover when MI5 were still gunning for everybody associated with the Aurora Borealis, appeared only on birth certificates in this world. Elsewhere it was another matter.  
  
Will didn't want to have what had happened to him happen to his own children; they were growing up knowing BOTH parents, no matter what. However, he was acutely aware that Lyra felt that parents were pretty much dispensable; her own parents were a good example. She'd shot both of them, after all...  
  
The car pulled up, and they got out. A girl with short, spiky black hair waved to Eddie, who smiled back and wandered over. Will exchanged glances with his wife. "Looks like he's under orders -or requests; you know John's leadership style- to leave us in peace."  
  
Trish came running up to them. "Will! Lyra! It's been too long!" Hugs and kisses were exchanged. "Come on in. The others are in conference with our contact in Bosnia, 'cept for John; he's been to collect his new toy."  
  
"Only difference between a boy and a man..." Lyra replied wryly. "So, what's the story behind this Meacom guy? You guys usually keep things in the family."  
  
"Oh, he's one of Anya's buddies. Quite romantic, really; he fell for a girl trying to gain asylum because her family were in trouble with the Mafia, and went with her when she was deported. We came across him when Putin got the push; it was him holding the gun on TV, in fact. He and John both decided to declare war on Blunkett's asylum policies at about the same time, so we pooled our resources and put him in charge of organising it; damn, but he's handy at that part! Tatiana's family are almost all in the military so he's got us some ex-Spetznaz guys, real professional hard bastards, doing convoy security. The local syndicates've taken a few cracks at our operation, plus there's the police and Customs people of about five different countries to worry about."  
  
"Still fighting the establishment, huh?" Will laughed.  
  
"Only the parts that don't remember who backed them up five years ago," Trish replied.  
  
They strolled into the building, to find an air of controlled chaos. People were shifting boxes of stuff around and arguing over pieces of paper in Russian. Phones were going off every few seconds. Over it all, somewhat incongruously, Will could clearly hear a small child whining about something or other. It abruptly ceased, and he glanced over. John and Isobel's five year-old daughter Chloe had been effectively gagged by somebody shoving a huge lump of Cadbury's Dairy Milk in her mouth. Charlie gave them a thumbs-up. Lyra rolled her eyes.  
  
"Sure you want HIS kids?" she said to Trish.  
  
"Don't knock it, it works," Will said with a faint smile.  
  
"William Thomas Parry!" Lyra glared at him, and he wilted visibly. John appeared at this point.  
  
"Hey, guys. Good to have you on the team again."  
  
"We haven't signed up yet," Will pointed out, shaking hands with his old friend. "The cash IS an incentive, though."  
  
"Thought so. Jack signed on in half a second, of course; says he's bored after five years without even a little war." Will sighed. Typical Jack. Wonder what Carrie-Anne thinks of this?Jack had eventually succeeded in getting into his gorgeous Welsh copilot's underwear not long ago. "He's in the conference room with the other pilots. We'll explain the full details in there."  
  
Jack was tipped back in his chair, coffee mug in hand and arguing the relative merits of the Joint Strike Fighter -his usual mount in Fleet Air Arm service- versus the new MiG 44 with a man that Will presumed to be fighter pilot number four. He jumped to his feet.  
  
"Ha! I KNEW John'd think of a way of getting you in on this!" He laughed. "Great to be working with you again, pal!"  
  
"Hey, we haven't signed on yet," Will warned. "And what would Carrie-Anne say if she knew you were doing this?" Jack winced.  
  
"Well, I'm in for the sheer nogalstia of it all," Lyra said firmly. "I reckon it'll be a good laugh." They looked at him expectantly for a while.  
  
Will sagged in defeat. "Okay, okay. I'm in, God help me!"  
  
John gave them a brief outline of what they would be doing. "There's a little town called Brestograd -don't; I've heard all the gags- where government-loyal regular army forces and the local Muslim minority population are fighting a losing battle against Milosecvic's old pals. A Colonel Petrovic contacted me and asked for all the support we could provide; he offered me all the money his townsfolk could scrape together, but we're doing this one pro bono publico. The idea of massacring people because they're different appalls me, and always will. Through contacts made after Operation Eviction Notice eight years ago, I've got hold of enough military hardware to hold off half the Serbian army and the means to get it to where it's needed. We have a trio of BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles, a T80 main battle tank, three assorted helicopters and four Fulcrum-D fighters with all the bells and whistles. I'd have liked to get hold of a couple of Su-25s for close air support, but they haven't got the range or air-to-air capability to escort the transports, and we haven't got enough pilots to have separate ground attack and dogfighting types anyhow.  
  
"There's a disused runway about thirty miles from Brestograd, where we'll offload our equipment. The Fulcrums can easily stage out of there, and our fuel and weapon caches can be stored there. Our ground assets will be reinforcing the defenders of Brestograd until the Russians can organise a peacekeeping force to relieve us. We can expect repeated attacks and near constant artillery bombardment, so this one's going to be tough. Questions?"  
  
"Can we expect an attack on the airstrip?" Will asked.  
  
"Brestograd's between it and the enemy, so we should be able to intercept any assault directed against the base. Chances are they'll try, though. Lizzie?"  
  
"How big are friendly and enemy forces?" John looked faintly rueful.  
  
"Friendlies on the ground right now number perhaps a hundred fighters. We have about two hundred embarking with us, not counting vehicle and helo crews, medical and service personnel. Ranged against us is a whole mechanised battalion; tanks, armour, attack choppers and about a thousand troops. We'll still have one crucial advantage, though. Air power." The fighter pilots beamed. "We leave in two days." 


	3. Stuff That Shouldn't Happen To The Over3...

Will ran a hand over his Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-29D multi-role fighter, NATO codename 'Fulcrum'. It was a sleek, sharklike aircraft with a remarkable turn of speed and good all-round combat capability. It had only seven hardpoints, however, one of which was taken up by a fuel tank. The remaining six hardpoints contained four AA-10 Alamo radar guided beyond-visual-range missiles and a pair of AA-11 Archer heatseekers. The aircraft nearby had anti-radar missiles instead of Alamos; they were designed to home in on hostile radar sets, and intended for air-defence suppression. This would be the job of pilot number four, Yuri Kamarov. He was a polite if somewhat formal man, and still slightly suspicious of NATO aircrew; a product of training by men who were having second thoughts about glasnost, perestroika and detente.  
  
Will's fighter was painted a gleaming silver, the colour of the first aircraft he'd flown in on a combat mission. A convincing rendition of the Northern Lights were painted on the tailfins, and an image of the Knife pointed along each side of the nose. It looked almost as good as the original Aurora Borealis, and Will hoped that Dave would have approved. Lyra had gone for a deep scarlet finish with streaks of flame along the sides on her own machine, whilst Jack had his painted matte black with a detail from an Iron Maiden album cover (that skeleton guy called Eddie The 'Ead, in case you were wondering) on each tail fin. Yuri had been relatively restrained, selecting midnight blue with hammer-and-sickle tail art.  
  
"Well, nobody's ever going to think we're official military personnel," John remarked. He'd left his aircraft in camoflauge colours as it would be operating much closer to the enemy lines; the same had been done for the Hueys. "The President would be less than impressed if I got him in that sort of mess!" The UN had implored all nations to coordinate their peacekeeping efforts and not do things their own way, bicker amongst each other and make life pointlessly difficult, like they usually did. Some chance,Will concluded grimly. He'd been on a peacekeeping jaunt in Iran just after the mullahs overrode the elected government one time too many and all hell broke loose. Everybody ignored what the others were doing, and refused point blank to listen to suggestions from anybody else. The British were as bad as anybody else at this, to be honest.  
  
"Are we nearly set?" Will asked.  
  
"Just sorting out some things at Petrovic's end, and then we leave. Looking forward to it?"  
  
Will gave his friend a look. "Getting shot at is not something I EVER look forward to. You'd think I'd have got used to it by now, but I haven't."  
  
"To be brutally honest, I rather enjoy this sort of thing; that's not right, is it?" John said with a faintly self-depreciatory grin.  
  
Will just sighed. "You need professional help, old pal!"  
  
Eighteen hours later, seven aircraft left a small field in central Russia and headed south towards what used to be Yugoslavia. The three heavy transports flew in a remarkably tight V formation, with the huge great 'Condor' in front and the smaller 'Candids' trailing behind. The MiGs flew above and behind in a loose line abreast formation, radars set to non-aggressive search mode. To track a specific aircraft as a precursor to launching a missile required a detectable shift in radar beam configuration that could be picked up in seconds, so as long as they left the radars on search then nobody would get trigger happy. Or so they hoped.  
  
Will's own radar detection systems began to beep at him. "AWACS radar just swept us. Hey, it just shut off- must be worried we'll home in on them."  
  
"Well, I'd be nervous driving a bus like that in a warzone," Jack replied. "Did you get a position on him?"  
  
"Not on my screen, but the radar warner says he's in our two o'clock, not sure of range yet."  
  
"We make it three-zero miles or thereabouts," John said from the Condor, which had more sophisticated threat-detection avionics to compensate for being unarmed. "Hmm. A couple more radar sets just came online. Computer says they're APG-68V5s, the one from the F16." He broke off. "Jesus Christ, they're trying to lock onto us!"  
  
Yuri began yelling angrily over the international emergency channel, playing the aggrieved military pilot escorting a humanitarian aid mission and hamming up his accent a bit. They evidently didn't buy it.  
  
"Okay, Ivan," a Texan voice drawled, "if you wanna mix it up with the US Air Force then go right ahead!" Every threat warning reciever in the formation lit up as an AMRAAM launched from one F16 towards the Condor. There was a confused thirty seconds as all seven aircraft swerved, the transports away from the enemy and the fighters towards them. Everybody's radar screen started to scramble as the electronic jamming and decoying metallic 'chaff' interfered with the radar. The profusion of false and genuine radar returns confused even the sophisticated AMRAAM, and it exploded short of the mark. The US fighters moved in, switching to heatseekers and guns, but found themselves dangerously outnumbered. One of them caught a volley of cannon fire and spun away, the pilot bailing out seconds later. "Choke on it!" Jack yelled, rolling his wings derisively. The remaining fighter shoved the throttles forward and gave it full afterburn, running for his life. Lyra locked her Alamos on him, and the F16 dived to increase its speed.  
  
"That took 'em down a peg or two," she remarked. "Next time they'll brings some friends along!"  
  
"Good," Jack replied. "There'll be enough to go around next time!"  
  
"You've been around John too long."  
  
"Yeah, s'pose. Oh, now what?"  
  
The Aegis radar system can pump out six million watts of energy, enough to seriously endanger the health of anybody standing close to the dish, and the one aboard the Spruance-class destroyer stationed in the Sea of Azov was pointing every single one their way. Yuri launched a radar-homing missile, which locked on in half a second. The destroyer shut its radar off and hastily went to full astern. The missile dived for the last point of emanation, detonating less than a boatlength from its target. The destroyer evidently took the hint, and left its radar turned off.  
  
They landed without further incident, the local US military detachment having evidently filed them under 'To Be Left Alone' for the time being. There was a couple of buses and a truck waiting for them courtesy of Colonel Petrovic, who was here to greet them in person. He was a tall and exceptionally broad man with a beard with which you could stuff a mattress, and had a booming voice that could be heard over an idling jet engine. Think Brian Blessed with a Russian accent.  
  
The four fighter pilots popped the canopies and clambered awkwardly over the side of their cockpits, making do without the cockpit ladders that would be provided under normal circumstances. A thud and a curse from the direction of the black Fulcrum indicated that Jack had been unsuccessful. There was sniggering.  
  
"Yes thanks, I'm quite alright," he said sarcastically. "God, what a dump!"  
  
Will took in the expanse of potholed concrete, crumbling hangar buildings and decrepit prefabricated huts, and was forced to agree. "The Soviets certainly couldn't build stuff too well," he agreed. "I hope the town's a bit better."  
  
"It was, before the Serbs spent three days bombarding it with heavy artillery," Petrovic observed gloomily.  
  
"This is starting to feel like a very bad way to spend half a year's accumulated leave," Lyra said sourly.  
  
"Who's idea was it to agree to this?"  
  
"Oh give it a rest, you two!" John said irritably; he hated long-distance flying. "Are those prefabs habitable, colonel?"  
  
"I doubt it, but we can provide accomodation for your pilots in the town when not on alert."  
  
"I suggest we cut cards for who goes first," Will added. "Asking for volunteers strikes me as a bit pointless."  
  
"Yeah. Look, let's check and see if those prefabs are really as bad as they look while they finish unloading," John suggested. "Can you handle things here, Eddie?"  
  
"Sure!" Meacom took over, calling instructions to the assembled personnel in fluent Russian.  
  
John forced the door of the nearest prefab, and winced. "Did something die in here?"  
  
"Probably... Oh, shit!" Will turned away from the door he'd opened and threw up at the sight of the mutilated corpses.  
  
Petrovic ordered the huts, and the bodies dumped in them by the hardliners, burned. "This is what we are up against," he said simply. "They are not men, not by any standard."  
  
John chambered a rifle round. "Let's go get the bastards," he said grimly. "We use the fighters to hit their camp, finish them off with the choppers and ground troops. Can you spare anybody, Colonel?"  
  
"I will send some of my best men, but the bulk of my forces will be needed to act as rearguard. If we leave the town exposed then what we saw in those huts will be repeated."  
  
"I understand. Okay, people, you heard! Let's GO!"  
  
If there was any reply it was lost, as Will and Lyra were suddenly engulfed in a blaze of light and snatched away.  
  
Eddie took a deep breath. "What the HELL just HAPPENED?" he half-screamed.  
  
"I'm not sure," John admitted. "But I doubt that this is a good sign," he added with impressive prescience.  
  
The two of them found themselves standing in the middle of a circle of witches, somewhere in the Arctic. Their daemons were visible, so this was Lyra's world.  
  
Will drew his pistol. If Serafina wanted to talk to them, he reasoned, she'd come and visit. Kidnapping wasn't her style, unless for some reason she couldn't travel, in which case things were VERY bad indeed...  
  
The large number of bows levelled at them suggested another explanation that hadn't previously occurred to him. These witches were in league with one of the many organisations, individuals and occasional supernatural entities that Lyra and himself had pissed off at one stage or another.  
  
Lyra had her own weapon drawn, but saw that it was hopeless. Frustrated, she tossed the pistol away. Will followed suit.  
  
"What do you want?" he demanded.  
  
The witches parted to reveal a man in gleaming white robes. He looked thirtyish, and was handsome in a harsh sort of way. He grinned like a lizard.  
  
"Welcome," he said in what was suppposed to be a friendly way. "I don't believe we ever met face to face, but you certainly caused me a great deal of inconvenience. I was just about to be promoted via dead men's shoes through the unwitting auspices of your late father, Ms Silvertongue, when you and your companion succeeded in messing things up royally. As you can well imagine, I take a dim view of this." Metatron paused for effect. If he was hoping them to clutch at each other fearfully then he was disappointed. Man, woman, cat and pine marten looked at each other. "Shit," they chorused.  
  
"So what are you going to do now?" Lyra said pleasantly. "Explain your devious plan to rule the universe before putting us in a situation from which we will have to escape by some improbable means? After all, you've been sticking religiously -pardon the expression- to the James Bond villan cliche thus far."  
  
Metatron permitted himself a tight little smile. "You are showing considerable bravery for somebody whom I can have killed with a mere word of command. You are quite wrong, in fact. I was rather hoping to enlist your aid, as it happens."  
  
"To do what, rule SEVERAL universes? I'd love to know how you intend to convince us to have anything to do with THAT!" Will said derisively. "Do tell, please."  
  
"By offering you absolute control of your respective worlds, and returning your parents from the world of the dead. Also by taking your children hostage if you turned down the first offer. Interested yet?" He paused, smiling that tight little smile that both Will and Lyra dearly wished to punch.  
  
"What do you need us for, anyhow?" Will asked, frantically trying to keep him talking whilst he looked for some way of getting away without dying. "You certainly aren't without allies. What difference would the two of us make?"  
  
"Better to recruit you as allies than face you as enemies, in my opinion," Metatron explained. "After all, you do have a knack for upsetting the best-laid plans of angels and men when you so choose. I'd rather that they weren't MY plans for a change," he added sourly.  
  
"Got any bright ideas?" Will asked hopefully.  
  
"Nope," Lyra replied.  
  
However, luck was on their side. A large contingent of witches aligned with the forces of truth, justice and liberty dived from above, showering the rival clan with arrows. Lyra dived for the guns, tossing Will his own weapon and aiming two quick snapshots at Metatron, who was regarding the battle unfold with an expression of mild annoyance. He didn't appear to notice.  
  
"Come on, let's get out of here!" Pan yelled at her, being the voice of reason as usual. She nodded, shoved him inside her flight suit and ran like hell, Will close behind. The battle was sufficiently intense that nobody noticed them, though the odd miss and ricochet came perilously close.  
  
"So," Will gasped once they were at what they judged to be a safe distance, "what do we do now?"  
  
"I can see a town over that way," Lyra replied. "It'll be at least a day's walk, but we've got compasses, survival money and reasonably warm clothes. This is just the kind of thing we trained for in Norway back when we were cadets." She had apparently forgotten how far behind them THAT was, not that either of them had any desire to remember.  
  
"Okay, let's get going." Will sighed. "Stuff like this shouldn't happen to the over-thirties, you know."  
  
"You getting premature middle age, or what?" she laughed, nudging him. "We aren't over the hill yet!"  
  
It occurred to Will, as he began trudging wearily towards the distant lights of town, that Lyra secretly rather enjoyed this sort of thing. This presumably explained her continuing enthusiasm for camping holidays.  
  
A witch on a cloud-pine branch hurtled overhead, looped the loop and came to a skidding halt a few yards from them. Serafina Pekkala waved them over. "Climb on!" she ordered.  
  
"Oh, you have GOT to be kidding! That thing'll never take our weight!" Will said, but he climbed on nevertheless.  
  
"You're thinking too conventionally," Lyra replied. "Hold tight!"  
  
The branch rocketed into the sky, its occupants clinging on for dear life. "This kind of crap should NOT happen to the over thirties!" Will grumbled, his eyes tightly shut. Lyra, by contrast, seemed to be enjoying herself immensely.  
  
"Wow!" she shouted above the rushing wind. "Where are we going?"  
  
"To the Fens," Serafina replied. "We will be safe there for the time being. I have to confess that I am uncertain how we will successfully defeat Metatron this time, but no doubt you will think of something."  
  
"Us? Oh God, not again! How many times do we have to save the bloody universe before we'll get some peace and quiet?" Will groaned. Kirjava bit him viciously on the thumb.  
  
"Stop whinging!" she said crossly. "Listen, we're going to need John and his crew; he's got a small private army back in our world. With them onboard we can take on just about anybody!"  
  
Will declined to comment. 


	4. Let Slip The Dogs Of War!

Dr Mary Malone enjoyed peace and quiet. She'd never settled into a relationship over the years, and so had avoided children with minimal effort. She felt herself fortunate in this regard. She had a reasonable social life, the odd casual suitor, two godchildren to spoil rotten every so often and a very well-paid job with MoD.  
  
As a result, she was slightly annoyed when Xanthania turned up in her living room in a blaze of pointless flashy effects that utterly failed to impress her. "Great. Who's trying to take over the world this time?"  
  
"Metatron," the angel replied urgently.  
  
"What? You guys got rid of him at the same time as... Oh, shit. So that's how they got loose." Mary sighed. "Here we go again. Can't somebody else save the world this time?"  
  
"Who is better qualified than the people who saved it last time?" Xanthania asked reasonably.  
  
"True. Part of me wishes I could just say it was somebody else's problem, though. So, who are we working with?"  
  
"We are gathering every ally we can in the Fens. Come, take my hand." They vanished in a blaze of light.  
  
"Look, I have a whole bunch of other commitments right now," John pointed out. "I'm really not sure I can just drop everything."  
  
"We're talking about the conquest of the whole universe by God's spin doctor," Will replied.  
  
"After all the years we've known each other I'm supposed to be impressed?" he smiled bitterly. Will groaned. Part of the problem, he suspected, was that John was a complete atheist. Will wasn't, on account of having run into all manner of divine creatures over the years. He'd even run into God briefly, not to mention Metatron.  
  
"Look, at least come as far as our new HQ. For old times sake?"  
  
"Okay, okay. I'll put it to the others, at least."  
  
"I will pledge my fighting men," Petrovic offered; he was a devout Catholic, and found the whole thing much easer to grasp. "If you will provide sanctuary for the civilians then Mr West will be released to give you assistance."  
  
"Okay, okay!" John gave in. "You win!"  
  
"Not yet we haven't..."  
  
"Sir, I think they will be a valuable assest," Xanthania told her boss. The Authority looked somewhat reluctant.  
  
"You KNOW I don't do reincarnations. Not after last time. Everybody kept expecting me to do it again!"  
  
His personal troubleshooter and righthand angel nodded sympathetically; she had vivid recollections of the whole thing. Well, at least this one wasn't likely to demand full editorial rights over the Holy Scriptures.  
  
"We need all the help we can get, and the propaganda opportunities would be enormous." Her boss gave Xanthania a sharp look.  
  
"You're starting to sound like Metatron," he admonished. The ex-Voice of God hadn't been content with being 'sort of like a divine equivalent of the Presidential spokesman' as Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman put it in Good Omens, but had tried to turn himself into Alistair Campbell with a halo. "Very well," the Authority said wearily, "have him brought up here, and I'll see if he's amenable. And I suppose he'll be wanting that blasted aeroplane as well..."  
  
"You want me to WHAT?" I nearly exploded. "Oh, come ON. I was really rather enjoying a nice quiet retirement. Being dead barely spoiled it at all." I paused. "Elaine going back to John did, though." I hadn't argued, of course; perhaps it's a little vulgar to say that he was there first, but that was pretty much the general thrust of the case for him having precedence. It's taken me many years to admit it, but I was secretly glad to be free of Elaine's constant nagging about just about everything I did. Or didn't do, or did wrong, or- well, you get the picture.  
  
"Well, there isn't a huge amount I can do about that," the Authority replied. "However, I might have an alternative." He opened the window of the small, well-appointed office we were occupying, probably only in a metaphysical sense. To my mild surprise, a small silver bird flew in. It looked like a cross between a seagull and a hawk, but with a strange iridescent plumage that reflected the light in an odd way. Comprehension slowly dawned.  
  
I reached out, and she settled on my shoulder. "Hello again, girl," I said quietly, tears in my eyes. "I always knew there was more to you than metal and wiring." I straightened. "Alright, count me in."  
  
"Thought you'd come round to the idea," the Authority said with a cheerful smile. He showed me to the door, and we emerged in the Fens. The bird took off from my shoulder, and landed in the water. The Authority snapped his fingers, there was a blinding flash, and...  
  
The Aurora Borealis was gently riding the slight swell. I broke down and wept at the sight of her. "I'm sorry," I said after a few moments. "but the two of us went through so much together, we- we're old friends. My deamon's an aeroplane, I guess."  
  
"She feels the same; that's why she volunteered," the Authority replied softly. "Alright, she's fully fuelled and ammunitioned. Four Sidewinders and two Mavericks, as per usual. The interior should be just as you remember, only tidier; we've even filled the fridge. The forces of good are massing for the biggest Roping this century, and all the usual suspects are present and correct. Their reaction ought to be quite interesting!"  
  
"I'll say," I replied. "Right, I'll see you around, then." I boarded Aurora, and gave her a quick once-over. Everything was how I remembered it, right down to the DVD Elaine had left in the player. I winced slightly, but took hold of myself and made my way to the cockpit.  
  
"Shall we?" I said to the bulkhead, beginning the prestart checklist. Naturally, everything was perfect. "Okay then, let's go meet up with some old friends." I activated the iPod that Lyra and I had integrated with the helmet communication earphones, and dialled up 'The Boys Are Back In Town' by Thin Lizzy. I opened the throttles to full military power and pulled back on the stick, launching Aurora skyward.  
  
Will heaved another crate of AK105 assault rifles out of the Huey, which was doing ferry duty through the hastily opened fixed portal created by the captured projector left over from the fight with the Nazis. "We REALLY need some proper heavy-lift aircraft. With the amount of kit we're having to ship in it'll be days before everybody's even got a rifle."  
  
"Make the portal big enough to take even the Ilyshins and we'll be noticed," John replied. "It was bad enough pallet dropping everything out the Ruslan; we were lucky the pilot of that interceptor remembered us from five years ago."  
  
"The Raff aren't all bad then!" Will laughed; inter-service rivalry was largely forgotten these days as everybody ganged up on the Yanks, but naval aviators think of themselves as a breed apart. "It wouldn't have to be a big military job; we haven't got space to land it around here anyway. Something like a big Westland cargo helicopter, or even little freight job like a Skyvan..." he tailed off, his jaw hanging open, and pointed.  
  
Aurora made a low flypast, rattling windows and causing a few slight panic attacks. "What-? How-? Who-?" Will stuttered in uncomprehending astonishment.  
  
"I'll bet my DFC Xanthania had a hand in this," Lyra replied. "I wonder if your dad's there as well?"  
  
"Well, there's no way Mum's flying like that," Will said, regaining some of his composure. Lyra made no reply to this.  
  
Aurora glided in and made a neat landing amid the profusion of boats. She taxied gently to the jetty they'd used so many times before, and shortly afterwards a familiar figure came out of the side door.  
  
I'd taken the time to outfit myself in a new flight suit, and dug out my old helmet. My Beretta was in its usual place beneath my left arm, and I had one of Aurora's H&K G36 assault rifles slung across my back, with a couple of spare clips taped to the stock. Theatrical, I admit, but I felt like making an impression. Hence the cigarette dangling from my upper lip, Dirty Harry style. I probably looked like a complete tit, of course.  
  
"Hi," I said conversationally.  
  
Will and I embraced as father and son, which to all intents and purposes we are. "Where's Mum? And John?" he asked.  
  
"Still dead. She, er, sort of picked John over me." I tried to shrug manfully and failed. "Well, he was better looking than me anyhow. Anyway, we've got other things to worry about. What's the state of play logistics-wise?"  
  
"Better than you'd expect; John finally found himself a decent manager. And an Mi-28 attack helicopter." I blinked a couple of times at this last bit.  
  
"The mind boggles. So, what have I missed?"  
  
Will filled me in briefly as we headed to what was laughingly referred to as the briefing room. It was the bar. "Oh, GOD, not this place! I have some bad memories involving your Rick Astley impression," I told him. Lyra might have been quite taken with it, but as for me...  
  
"At least I didn't end up sleeping in a rowing boat," he replied smoothly. I took an affectionate swipe at him.  
  
The usual suspects were indeed present and correct. Everybody looked exactly as I remembered, near as damn it.  
  
"Hi, guys," I said in as normal a fashion as I could manage. "Nice to be back." There was an almighty amount of back-slapping and hugging, and a load of questions about why I wasn't dead. I fielded them as best as I could, not really feeling up to dealing with it all.  
  
"So, what have you guys been up to while I've been out of it?" This took a while to answer.  
  
"Then it was YOU who convinced Putin to resign. I thought I recognised your style!" John grinned.  
  
"It wasn't me pointing the gun at him, actually; that was Eddie." Meacom, who looked as if he felt so out of his depth he'd need a week in a decompression chamber once this was all over, nodded vaguely in acknowlegement. "Business has been good recently. We've been making money hand over fist, and we've made enough friends in high places to operate without much interference," he added. "We're national heroes in Russia."  
  
"I'll bet," I replied. "I suppose that's how you got hold of that Havoc and the Fulcrums." John didn't reply. "Do we know exactly what we're up against? Besides God's disgraced former spin doctor, of course."  
  
"A few angels have gone over to Metatron. Possibly some of the witch clans and the remnants of the Nazis, as well. Right now, though, we know effectively nothing. We don't even know which world," John Faa replied. "I've heard a thousand rumours, most of which flatly contradict each other. We're hoping that Xanthania can come up with something solid for us."  
  
I nodded without enthusiasm, lighting a cigarette. This was getting less and less promising by the minute.  
  
"These... fallen angels," I said thoughtfully. "Do they wear black robes?"  
  
"Yes. Why?"  
  
"Because I saw a couple of mutual acquaintances of ours get snatched a couple of days ago. Seeing as there's no way in hell they should have been in a position to even make it as far as the afterlife without some help from Metatron, it seems like a safe bet that he had a hand in breaking them out."  
  
"Good. We get to kill them again," Lyra replied. "Slowly, this time." I shared a somewhat alarmed glance with Will.  
  
John smiled faintly. "Hey, you didn't meet my dad while you were there, did you?"  
  
"The opinionated Liverpudlian who looks like David Brent? Yeah, I think I might have. Got right on my tits, he did." We laughed. "Your mum says hi as well. I told her you're a teacher."  
  
"You think she might disapprove of his choice of career?" Trish enquired.  
  
"She found out off Elaine and had apoplexy," I replied, wincing. "She calmed down when I explained about the Death Row in Louisiana, and breaking up that kiddy-porn ring in Moscow."  
  
We were interrupted by the sudden arrival of a faintly dishevelled and breathless Xanthania.  
  
"We may have a slight problem," she said shortly. There was a tremendous explosion and a rattle of gunfire.  
  
"Jesus Christ, we're under attack!" There was a general stampede for the door. I grabbed Trish, Mick and Charlie and yelled at them to take over Aurora's gun turrets, then leapt into the cockpit and started the engines.  
  
A dozen of the odd Nazi planes that were capable of dimensional jumps, Junkers-578s or some such, were coming in to attack. I could see several armoured vehicles heading towards town as well.  
  
"Right. Showtime!" I deployed gun turrets, missile pylons and the rocket pod, and immediately warmed up my Sidewinders.  
  
"Attention," a chillingly recognisable voice called over the distress frequency. "I am looking to recruit personnel to my military forces. The rates of pay and fringe benefits are quite good."  
  
"Oh, sod off!" I replied. Mary's observation was unprintable.  
  
"You!" Asriel hissed.  
  
I grinned, and launched missiles. "Shove THIS down the front of yer trousers!" Lyra yelled, letting off a volley of cannon fire at a Ju-578 with a red tail stripe. I was vaguely interested to note that the 9-18 series Fulcrum, the last variant off the line, had two cannons instead of one. The fighter which Asriel was presumably flying heeled over and came down firing. Will launched an AA-11 at him.  
  
I was tied up with the bandits that hadn't fallen to my Sidewinders. Jack and Yuri were busy strafing the ground vehicles. I wasn't sure where the helicopters were at this point. It was a frenetic dogfight, at point blank range, and I was loving every minute. I was back in my element. Aurora felt like an extension of my body, and every sense and reflex was magnified a thousandfold. I yanked back the stick and flipped Aurora right over in a hammerstall. "Look out below!" I dived at the first fighter I saw, and blasted it with my miniguns. It exploded spectacularly.  
  
"To hell with this! All units fall back!" Asriel turned his fighter around and jammed the burners up to full. His fighter vanished in a flash moments later as the jump drive kicked in. His colleagues weren't far behind.  
  
"Round one to us, methinks," I laughed. "Good job, everybody. They won't try that again for a while!" I set down near the jetty, and taxied in.  
  
"Still got the touch then?" Jack remarked. "Not bad for an old guy."  
  
"I'm not forty-five yet, you cheeky bastard!" Well, if you don't count the five years I spent dead, anyway.  
  
"Metatron has established a base of operations in the Alps of the world of the Nazis. It is an old schloss of some kind," Xanthania explained. "A former luxury residence of the old regime, I believe."  
  
"The Wolf's Lair," I agreed. "I've heard of it. I dread to think what the defences will be like."  
  
"What I'm wondering is how we're going to get everybody there," John added. "Our airlifters are gone. With the portal generator left over from the last war we can get as far as the right world, but then there's a journey of several hundred miles."  
  
Jack looked thoughtful for a moment. "John, I think I've got an idea..." 


	5. Now It's Personal

I strode confidently towards the offices of the biggest freight/passenger line based at Sywell airfield. The pretty receptionist consulted the appointment book on the high-priced mahogany desk. "David Ransom? Go on through, Mr Watson is expecting you." I headed for the office.  
  
"Hi, Frank."  
  
"Dave!" My former business partner leapt to his feet. "Why didn't you tell me it was you?"  
  
"I'm trying to keep a low profile. Look, I need to shift eight hundred people and about twelve tons of cargo from Norfolk to the German Alps, and quite quickly."  
  
"How illegal is this, Dave?" Frank enquired slowly.  
  
"You don't want to know. The less I tell you the less trouble you'll get into."  
  
"Are we talking like when you got mixed up with that lunatic Yank scientist?" he said worriedly. "It took two years before Special Branch left me alone."  
  
I sighed. Frank was an old friend, and the least I owed him was the truth, or as much of it as he'd believe. "I'm working with Johnny West and his lot. There's likely to be an awful lot of shooting, but it's HIGHLY unlikely that the security services will find out. I can't tell you all of it because you'd never believe it; Christ, I don't believe all of it myself."  
  
"Look, Dave, I can't let you use this firm's aircraft for any illegal purpose. I was lucky to stay out of jail when it was just drugs, but you're talking about hiring out my planes to a bloody terrorist organisation... Whoa."  
  
Wordlessly, I placed the briefcase full of used tens and twenties on his desk.  
  
"On second thoughts..." he said slowly. The old offer-shitloads-of-cash trick's never failed yet!  
  
Unfortunately, he insisted on accompanying the planes to the hastily improvised airfield we'd set up on the driest patch of Fenland we could find. To describe his reaction to the massive assemblage of military hardware as 'surprise' would be to make an understatement of monolitic proportions.  
  
"Dave, you are mixed up in some SERIOUS shit!"  
  
"You ain't seen nothing yet," I replied. "D'you reckon those Skyvans will take a small armoured vehicle?"  
  
"They used to be Army Transport Corps, so yeah, I think so. Son of a bitch, that's a T80!"  
  
"Yep. Got any ideas about getting it on a NATO drop pallet?"  
  
Frank began to gibber when the portal generator came online and admitted the fighters and helicopters. It had originally been fitted to a specially adapted Marder APC, but with a certain amount of technical assistance from Mary it had been rigged up on a tripod mounting from the long-defunct Wombat recoilless anti-tank gun and attached to a portable diesel generator. A similar targeting system to that fitted to Aurora was mounted above spade grips from a heavy machine gun to aim it at a fissure and align the lasers. Surrounding the portal area were four very powerful electromagnets to repel Dust and prevent leakage.  
  
"We'll have to widen it a bit," I told the operator, pointing to the huge Belfast cargo job. He nodded, and gestured to the rest of the crew to enlarge the 'clean zone'.  
  
"Dave, I don't think I can cope with this," Frank said slowly. "My grip on reality won't stand much more wierdness. I want to go home."  
  
At this point Xanthania chose to make an appearance. Frank whimpered a bit and then fainted. I sighed.  
  
"Bugger. Can somebody call him a cab and get him home, please?"  
  
Xanthania restrained herself from laughing, and handed John Faa a rolled map of the Wolf's Lair. "This was provided by an inside sympathiser. It shows the position of all the defences. Use it wisely."  
  
"Thanks. We'd better get these planes loaded," he replied. "Edward?"  
  
Eddie emerged from the back of the Belfast. "Give me a couple of hours and I can rig up a box-drop release mechanism. Don't know about the people though."  
  
"Think you can knock up some static lines?" John suggested.  
  
"Probably, but where are we going to get eight hundred parachutes?"  
  
"I might know a bloke," Charlie suggested helpfully. John sighed wearily.  
  
"You always do. That was how we ended up with four hundred RGD-5 hand grenades that didn't detonate and fifty SA-7s that wouldn't launch." Best not to ask what he wanted THOSE for. "Look, just because you know ONE reliable arms dealer does not make you-"  
  
"It's Big Vince."  
  
"Okay, fair enough. Didn't know he'd gone into army surplus."  
  
"They're about as army surplus as your G3, mate!"  
  
I had a VERY bad feeling about this. "Can we trust this Big Vince character?" I asked politely.  
  
"His daughter's living with my older brother, so yeah," Charlie replied. I didn't think that was necessarily a guarantee, but decided against saying so. Besides, if John was ready to trust him then he was probably okay.  
  
John pulled the Ford Cargo up outside a small warehouse in Soho, and we climbed out. "I hope he hasn't sold them yet," Charlie muttered.  
  
"Yeah, people'll be queuing around the block for stolen Army parachutes," John replied sarcastically. His usual amiability had been rather blunted by a long journey in close proximity to Charlie in full cockney-wideboy mode.  
  
We walked in, hearing low voices in conversation.  
  
"What's HE want with a rocket launcher?"  
  
"Got a few scores to settle with some former clients. Doesn't like being ratted on, y'see."  
  
"Right. Fine. Not my problem." Somewhat more quietly: "Jesus Christ."  
  
"Hey, Vince! Still got those parachutes?" Charlie enquired cheerfully. Vince and his client, a weaselly-looking man in a cheap suit, jumped a foot in the air. Vince rallied first.  
  
"John! Charlie! Good to see you again!" There was much handshaking and back-slapping. "The parachutes? 'Course I've still got the bloody things. Can't get rid of them."  
  
"Well, we need them for something," John explained. "You really don't want to know what. Eight hundred at five hundred quid each do you?"  
  
"Perfect, mate. Be right with you." He concluded negotiations with his other client, then turned to us. "Got a truck? Good. I'll have the lads load it up for you."  
  
"Great. By the way, who was that ferret buying for?" I asked. "One of the big dealers?"  
  
"Worse. Nicholas van Hoogsstraden."  
  
"You've sold NICHOLAS VAN HOOGSTRADEN a fucking ROCKET LAUNCHER?!" John yelled. "Vince, are you on crack?"  
  
"Look, I don't like it any more than you do. You wait until he tries to fire it!" Vince grinned. "Right, we'd better get the parachutes loaded up-" There was a tremendous explosion outside. "Oh, decided to test fire it at my warehouse, did he? Hah!" Vince examined the notes he'd been given. "Fake. Typical!"  
  
We went outside. Nothing was left of the weasel in the suit, and there was a large crater in the car park. Our truck was on fire. "Shit! That was a rental!" John complained.  
  
Sirens could be heard in the distance. "Oh, GREAT."  
  
We shoved the parachutes in the back of a couple of Movanos belonging to Vince and legged it just before the fire brigade and armed police arrived. "There goes another cache," Vince complained, sending a text message. The van nearly overturned, and all the windows imploded. Bits of terminally exploded warehouse rained down all around us.  
  
"Bloody hell, Vince," I admonished once my hearing had recovered.  
  
"Hey, at least it wasn't the place where I keep the nukes!"  
  
"NUKES?!"  
  
"Just kidding."  
  
By the time we got back it was early evening, and by some miracle Eddie had got everything organised. John and I checked the parachutes very carefully, and then handed them out.  
  
"Okay, let's get aboard and head out... What the hell's that?"  
  
Metatron appeared over our heads, grinning maniacally. He had a small dark-haired child firmly clamped under one arm.  
  
"Chloe!" John yelled. Isobel screamed.  
  
"It's obvious that I can't blackmail our two heroes, but how about you, West?"  
  
"Bastard! You're DEAD!" John yelled. "I'm going to fucking KILL you!"  
  
"Remember who's got her, West!" Metatron disappeared in a flash.  
  
John stood as if turned to stone. Grief and fear hardened into pure, blazing, white-hot rage. "Get the planes in the air," he said quietly yet with ice-cold, deadly menace. "We're moving out. Now."  
  
"You heard him, let's move!" I yelled. 


	6. Combined Ops

"Drop zone in three miles!" yelled the loadmaster. "Red light on!"  
  
"Alright," John told his troops, "the area's pretty heavily wooded but we have a clear zone about half a mile across. The pilot's trying to aim so that the wind blows us to about the right area, but chances are we'll be pretty scattered. The team already in place will be sending pyrotechnics up every half hour, so just follow them. Don't use your radios unless it's an emergency. If you crack up on landing then we'll try and casevac you with one of the Hueys, but please try not to. We're low on manpower as it is." It was a weak joke, but they laughed out of sheer nervousness.  
  
"One mile!" the loadmaster yelled. "Hook up and sound off!"  
  
Each man called out that the man in front was ready and safely rigged, the loadmaster checking the rearmost man himself before returning to the doorway.  
  
"Green light! Go!" John hurled himself out of the rear cargo door of the ancient Grumman turboprop. He half-heard the second call of "Go!" as his parachute opened and abruptly pulled him upright and to a near-halt. It was gentler than when you pulled your own ripcord, which felt like a good kick in the nuts if you left it too late.  
  
It was a beautifully delivered 'stick' of paratroops, all the more so for the fact that neither pilot nor paras had done this more than a couple of times before in rehearsal. I applauded from below.  
  
Meanwhile, the Shorts Belfast cargo plane was making its own pass. The rear doors hinged open, and the two men in the back threw out a drogue 'chute, tugging open the big box-drop parachute and pulling the pallet out of the aircraft. It pulled the second drogue out behind it, starting a chain reaction that pulled all five NATO cargo pallets out of the plane. Three of them held BMP-3 armoured infantry fighting vehicles, the Russian answer to the Bradley.  
  
"Best planned and executed airbourne operation I've been in on!" was Mitch's verdict. "You really can drop just about everything out the back of a plane if you wanna."  
  
"You said it; I know the bloke who flew the plane in the video for 'Wings Of A Dove' by Madness. Ever thought of box-dropping a VW campervan? Well, the RAF have." The bloke who flew the mission claimed to me -though since we were having a beer-and-bullshit session this should be viewed with suspicion- that it took ages to persuade the band that they couldn't REALLY be in the van whilst they dropped it. [Author's note: A fuller explanation than I can be bothered to provide can be obtained by watching the video itself]  
  
Eddie appeared in what later I learned to be his normal combat rig. Full camoflauge gear was covered by a heavy Kevlar vest. He had a pump-action shotgun in a scabbard on his back and a Skorpion machine pistol holstered on each hip. Just for a splash of colour, he was wearing a bandanna with the word 'Limitless' in red indelible marker written across it. It was incredibly unprofessional-looking even by the standards of John's rough-and-ready outfit, and it was all I could do not to laugh.  
  
"Oh, sweet Mother Russia!" Tatiana groaned. "Eddie, you look like a complete fool!" He ignored her.  
  
"Seen John yet? Ah, here he comes." John arrived at a run, G3 held at port-arms. He looked unusually military, dressed entirely in black and with cam cream all over his face; a far cry from his usual working attire of tatty jeans, old sports jacket that might once have been white, and baseball cap with any one of a variety of silly motifs. His one concession to power dressing, as he was fond of remarking, was the bulge under one armpit- power by anybody's standards!  
  
"Right, here's the plan as it currently stands. Eddie and Tatiana lead a six-strong recon mission to infiltrate the base. If possible you're to plant radio beacons wherever there's something important to blow up. They'll show up on our HUDs. And for God's sake find out where they're holding Chloe!"  
  
"Right. How about Dimitri and some of the Spetznaz guys?"  
  
John nodded. "Whatever. Just find my little girl, Eddie. Please." His voice trembled, but he rallied. "We'll be ready to go once you're back."  
  
"Okay, John. I'll get the team ready. We'll use Isobel's Huey." He moved off.  
  
John turned to me. "I'm scared, Dave. For the first time in Christ knows how long, I'm scared. Isobel's doing fine; she's too angry to be afraid. But me? Jesus, if this is being a New Man then I want to be the old sort. I was so determined to be a good father, and now THIS has to happen."  
  
"You'll get her back, kid. Listen, as dads go you're doing fine. Most dads, if their kids got abducted they'd just call 999. But you're risking life and limb to get her back personally. How many dads would do that?"  
  
"Well, the guy Arnie played in Commando, perhaps..." A flicker of humour, which was a good sign.  
  
"Get a life, John!" We laughed.  
  
I lit my eighth cigarette. "Come on, Eddie. What the hell are you playing at?"  
  
"Will you quit worrying?" Mary grumbled. "What's the rush?"  
  
"Sorry. It's the waiting; always bothered me more than the actual combat. Damn." I screwed up the empty cigarette packet. "I'm running out again."  
  
Mary shook her head. "Ellie never got you to quit, did she?"  
  
"Nope. She might well nag the hell out of me, but did I listen?" I blew a smoke ring. "Did I buggery!"  
  
"I worry about you."  
  
The radio crackled into life. "Black Star to Kestrel Three, requesting exfil. Mission accomplished, one minor casualty, over."  
  
"Kestrel Three recieves, on the way, over." The heavily armed Bell 212 -a descendent of the original UH-1, but still the Huey to just about everybody- lifted and headed up the slopes towards the rendezvous point.  
  
"About time," I muttered, flicking away the cigarette butt. "Wonder how it went?"  
  
"The outer perimeter security's pretty tight, but geared towards large-scale assaults; we didn't have much trouble getting in. We couldn't plant the radio beacons, though; the patrols were tighter on the inside, and they were making spot checks for sabotage. The air defences have been reinforced; I counted at least eight mpobile SAM batteries and a couple of dozen extra fifty calibres on tripods around the walls. They're certainly expecting trouble."  
  
"I'll bet," John replied. "Any word on Chloe?"  
  
"She's being held in the bomb shelter further up from the main building. It's at least eighty feet into the mountain; we could drop a nuclear bomb on the place and she wouldn't even notice."  
  
"Don't give him ideas!" Will joked. Eddie rolled his eyes, and continued.  
  
"The four big flak turrets seem to be directed by one radar set, which is about a hundred feet above the buildings. They look like an ex-naval system, something like Goalkeeper or Phalanx. I doubt they can be aimed optically, so if we nail the radar they'll be out of it. It's right above those big artillery emplacements, as well." He pointed to a spot on the blueprint. "Looked like the turrets from a self-propelled howitzer. If they're standard turrets then a single thousand pounder ought to splash the lot."  
  
I shook my head. "You're getting even nerdier than Johnny here!" I've always been vaguely suspicious of civilians who know more about military ordnance than I got from intelligence briefings as a fighter pilot.  
  
"Anyway, the key is the radar site. It's acting as the acquisition set for every gun and missile site in the area, judging by the number of cables we had to step over." Tatiana rubbed her sprained ankle and muttered something in Russian. "She's right; it's a real health and safety hazard! Anyway, we couldn't tell if the missiles were radar guided or heatseeking, but if we knock out the radar then we'll at least hurt their early warning capability."  
  
"What's the maximum range of those anti-radar missiles?" I asked Yuri.  
  
"One hundred twenty kilometres -about eighty miles- with enough altitude. They're also too fast to be tracked by triple-A."  
  
"Okay," John said, "here's what we're going to do. Yuri, you're our Wild Weasel. You'll have all the anti-radar missiles, and if it radiates, blow it up. Jack, your fighter will be carrying all the air-to-air kit. If they launch fighters, try and splash them on takeoff. If you can do it with beyond-visual-range stuff, better yet.  
  
"Dave, Will and Lyra, you've got the fun part. Ground attack." There were some ironic cheers. "Hit anything that looks important, and be ready to help out the ground troops if they come under fire. The choppers are going to try and breach the shelter; quite apart from my kid being in there, I'll bet that's where we'll find the leadership decisions being made.  
  
"Okay, everybody, you know your jobs. We go as soon as the fighters are loaded out."  
  
"Engine one start."  
  
"Hydraulics green."  
  
"Radar warming up. FLIR is green."  
  
"Radio check... green."  
  
"Weapons on safe. Mavericks self-testing now. All green."  
  
"Engine two start. Okay, we're ready."  
  
"Sparrow One to Sparrow Three," Will radioed. "Fiver says Kestrel One blows up more than everybody else, over."  
  
"No bet!" I replied. "Kestrel One, we're waiting for the word, over."  
  
John took a while to answer. I got the feeling he was nervous, which was unheard of for him. "Alright, good luck everybody. Let's go!"  
  
As one, the five aircraft throttled up and lifted from the inprovised runway. Being originally designed as carrier aircraft the Fulcrums had outstanding shortfield capability, and Aurora was pretty good as well- she had to be.  
  
We roared up the valley towards our objective, staying as low as possible. Hopefully they wouldn't spot us amongst the ground clutter.  
  
"Command, I have intermittent low-level radar contacts on an approach vector. Recommend we go to air-defence condition yellow."  
  
Asriel nodded. "They'll never learn. What's their ETA?"  
  
"Uncertain; track reliability is too low for an accurate estimate. Unlikely to exceed ten minutes."  
  
Asriel cursed under his breath. He'd been rather hoping for some peace and quiet once he had talked Metatron into kidnapping that brat, but apparently that particular scheme had backfired. Oh well... "Alert the defenders, and launch our aerocraft to find these phantom attackers. I'm transferring to the secondary command centre."  
  
He headed for the elevator that would take him to the safety of the bunker, but was stopped in his tracks by a tremendous explosion outside. "What in hell was that?"  
  
"The radar dish has taken a direct hit! The point defence turrets are disabled!" The radar operator swore in German. "My scope didn't show a damn thing until they were right on top of us!"  
  
Asriel simply ran for the lift. "This isn't bloody well fair!" he grumbled.  
  
Another explosion shook the compound just as he made it into the bunker. Marissa turned to him fearfully.  
  
"What's going on out there?"  
  
"Just an air raid," he reassured her. "Nothing to be alarmed about. Where's the child?"  
  
There was an almighty blast just outside, and a cloud of dust came down from the ceiling. "I think that'll be her parents," Marissa observed sourly. "I warned you that they'd try something like this, but did you listen?"  
  
"Oh, shut up. Get the child and take her to the gyrocopter. We may have to leave in a hurry."  
  
"I thought you said there was nothing to be alarmed about!"  
  
"Well, if I'm wrong we'll be prepared for the worst. Now get a bloody move on!"  
  
There was another tremendous explosion, and an exchange of small arms fire. Asriel wrenched open a weapon locker and grabbed a small submachine gun. Swearing profusely, he ran to the main door. Once he reached it, he immediately wished he hadn't been quite as hasty.  
  
"Ah." He swallowed.  
  
The Mi-28 Havoc attack helicopter was hovering at just above head height. The gun turret swivelled and pointed straight at his head. Two small transport helicopters flanked the Havoc, their assorted weapons also pointed Asriel's way.  
  
"Drop the gun and put your hands in the air. You can guess the alternative," a woman's voice boomed over a loudhailer.  
  
Asriel contemplated the alternative, and hurled the weapon at the attack helicopter. The pilot flinched, and shoved the stick down. All three helicopters veered one way or another. Asriel dived for the door, narrowly avoiding the reflex burst of gunfire from one helicopter.  
  
A bullet smacked off the concrete beside his head. Asriel drew his pistol and fired a couple of shots in the general direction of his pursuers, and was rewarded by a yell of pain. He laughed, and ran onwards. Suddenly, there was a dull thud, and something clattered to the ground in front of him. "What was- Aah!" The bright magnesium flare blinded him, the concussion deafened him, and he pitched forwards. By the time he recovered from the effects of the stun grenade fired from the launcher beneath Tatiana's M4, he was firmly trussed with flexicuffs.  
  
"Has he come around?" He thought it was West's voice.  
  
"I think so." Somebody he didn't recognise.  
  
"Good." Somebody -presumably West- kicked him forcefully in the groin.  
  
There was a brief scuffle. "John, we need him to answer some questions, so I'd appreciate it if he retained the power of speech! You can kick the shit out of him AFTER I've had a chat with him, alright?"  
  
"No it bloody well isn't alright," Asriel growled. I grabbed a handful of lapel and dragged him upright.  
  
"Listen, there are an awful lot of people here who'd get a lot of pleasure from horribly torturing you to an immensely unpleasant death, and I'm one of them. So let's have no more smartarse remarks, right?" I shoved him roughly into a chair, and placed his right hand on a flat surface, fingers spread. Will handed John a small hammer.  
  
"Now, are you going to answer our questions voluntarily?" I enquired politely.  
  
"No chance. As long as I keep my mouth shut then I don't die."  
  
John lowered the hammer. "Look, if it means getting my daughter back I'm willing to forgo inflicting the pain and suffering you so richly deserve, but you have to cooperate."  
  
"I'd like to offer you a guarantee," I added, "but I'm not certain I can do much to stop John. I haven't seen him this homicidally furious since Tony Blair got a peerage. It's still the best deal you're going to get, though."  
  
"And face Metatron afterwards? I'd rather take my chances with you."  
  
"Have it your way, then." John drew his pistol.  
  
"All right, all RIGHT. He's probably going to blame this debacle on me anyway. What would you like to know?"  
  
"Where your ladyfriend went in that chopper, for a start," John suggested.  
  
"Your guess is as good as mine. The gyrocopter's maximum range is about a hundred and fifty miles, and there are six or seven possible airfields she could have used. One thing I am certain of is that she'll make contact with one of Metatron's allies. Chances are they'll be back in Citigazze pretty soon."  
  
I nodded. "Well, that gives us a destination, at least. We'd better head out as soon as possible. How soon can we be ready?"  
  
"Two hours, once Frank gets back with the planes. How about him?" He pointed to Asriel. "He's cooperated, at least."  
  
"I suggest we take him with us. If it turns out he's lying, we can make it very clear how bad an idea it was," Will recommended. He drew the Knife and flourished the wickedly sharp, serrated blade I'd welded onto the hilt for him a lifetime ago.  
  
"Good idea. I doubt even Metatron will hold him responsible for anything he said or did whilst being coerced at gunpoint." I rubbed my eyes. "I'm going to get some sleep." 


	7. Metaphyisical, Or Just Weird?

[Author's Note: Since this is the last in the trilogy, I've decided to dispense with all pretence at rationality and give the Aurora Borealis a bit of dialogue for once!]  
  
I awoke suddenly, aware that somebody was in the room with me. One hand grabbed my Beretta, whilst the other turned on the light.  
  
"Who the HELL are YOU?"  
  
There was a woman of about thirty at the end of the bed. She was wearing a silver flight suit, much like my own. She had pale silver hair down to her waist, pulled back in a loose ponytail, and eyes that flashed a dozen colours- Like Aurora's hull,I thought disjointedly. She was about my height, and when she spoke it was with a surprisingly strong Midlands accent, even stronger than John's.  
  
"You might find this a little hard to believe," she said with a winning smile. "Watch!"  
  
There was a flash, and the bird I'd seen in God's office landed on the shelf above my head. I opened the drawer beside my bed and pulled out a half-bottle of Famous Grouse, which I kept there for whenever I felt unable to cope with things whilst sober. I unscrewed it and took a long pull. "Okay, I think I'll be able to get my head around this now."  
  
The woman returned, laughing at me. "You spend to much time in the real world."  
  
"Look, I'm not really good at this kind of thing. I'm not used to the concept of beautiful women incorporeally posessing aeroplanes, or beautiful women anywhere near my room come to that. This 'ghost in the machine' stuff is all a bit hard to grasp."  
  
"You never cottoned on before? You're always talking to me, occasionally using words you wouldn't to your mother, I might add. You always acted like I was a person, why act so amazed when you find out I really am?" She shook her head. "Dave, you are HOPELESS!"  
  
"Elaine always said that about me," I muttered sourly. "Especially when I used to talk to you. Thought it was rather silly. Look, this is all getting a bit metaphysical for me, you know?"  
  
"Yeah, I suppose it does sound a bit weird. Any chance of some of that whiskey?" I handed over the bottle. She drank nearly a quarter of it.  
  
"Bloody hell!" I remarked. She grinned.  
  
"I've had plenty of practice, like whenever you use kerosene as an alternate fuel!"  
  
"That Famous Grouse must be starting to work; that almost made sense." We laughed. "So, what should I call you? Aurora?"  
  
"I'll answer to Rori," she replied, curling her legs up underneath her. "So, you're finally shot of that hellion you maried, then." I gave her a sharp look. "Okay, sorry, sorry. I't's just that she seemed to spend most of her time alternately berating and patronising you; hadn't you noticed?" This last comment was delivered in a tone of which Elaine herself would have been proud, but I felt that this might not be a good moment to say so.  
  
"It's something I've had nearly fifteen years to get used to. Ellie's a good person underneath it all, though I'll grant you that I'm enjoying the sudden peace and quiet!" We laughed again.  
  
"By the way, I'm thinking that this is something I souldn't mention to the others. They'd think I was nuts- hell, before I let Will and Mary get me mixed up in all this I'd have come to the same conclusion myself. I haven't wholly discounted the possibility just yet, of course."  
  
"I can see why. Night, Dave." She faded away.  
  
Well,I thought to myself, there's something you don't see very often...  
  
When I woke up eight hours later, I was half-convinced it was some kind of bizarre dream. A glance at the whiskey bottle firmly disproved that. My brain simply shut down in the face of the implications of this, and the task of figuring them all out. I decided not to think of it this side of a decent cup of tea, and possibly a bacon roll for a change. Elaine was always telling me off about my cholesterol intake, among other things...  
  
Suddenly I stopped minding altogether that she'd picked John Parry over me. I had a starkly transparent insight into what Gerry out of The Good Life must have felt like when Margo was away. I began to whistle tunelessly as I strode to the galley in search of breakfast.  
  
My good cheer had evaporated by the time I'd left the plane. "He's WHAT?"  
  
"Taken the Havoc and lit off someplace, swearing he'd disembowel Marissa with a rusty spoon when he caught up with her. Isobel was in the other cockpit, and she was even more pissed, if that's possible." Will shook his head. "John's done some crazy things, but nothing like this."  
  
"So Asriel finally cracked? If he got something useful out of him then surely-?"  
  
"Couldn't tell you; Asriel's tied up in the back of the chopper." The part of my mind not actively engaged in thinking of painful things to do to John recalled that the Mi-28 has a small compartment in the back to accomodate downed aircrew or Special Forces.  
  
"Shit!" I yelled. "Have they completely lost the bloody plot?"  
  
"How rational are you about looking after your kid?" Mary pointed out.  
  
"He never needed rescuing," I replied. "See what you mean, though. Question is, what do we do now?"  
  
"Go after them, and hope they haven't got themselves killed yet."  
  
I sighed. "Yeah, because I'm going to kill him myself!"  
  
"See anything?"  
  
"Nothing, and there's not a cat in hell's chance of spotting them on radar in this place. Wait... No, just a deer." I readjusted the Forward Looking Infared scanner slightly. "Hmm. There's a VERY faint heat signature just over that ridge. Can you circle around and let me take a look from the other side?"  
  
"Sure." Mary dipped Aurora's left wing and banked around in a circle. We'd been taking it in turns for the past six hours, and we were even less optimistic than when we'd started. John, when I get my hands on you then I'm going to..."Hello, what have we here?"  
  
"What do you see?" Mary tapped at the keyboard set into the panel above her head, and brought up a repeat of the FLIR image on the screen just above the artificial horizon. "A chopper, but not John's Mil-28. Interesting..."  
  
We found a landing spot and disembarked, guns in hand. "Hello? Is anybody there?" I called.  
  
A pistol shot ricocheted off an outcrop of granite. "Don't come any closer or I'll kill the child!" Mrs Coulter yelled back. "I've got a lot less to lose than you!"  
  
"Precisely what would that achieve?" Mary enquired. "Just give it up, toss the gun out here and I'll try and prevent anybody from lynching you, okay?"  
  
"Go to hell- Argh! You BRAT!" There was a brief commotion, and a couple of gunshots. Chloe ran towards us.  
  
I raised my rifle, seeing Mrs Coulter aiming her handgun. "Chloe, get out of the way!" She dived for the ground, just as bullets began to fly. Marissa was slightly quicker off the mark, and a round slammed into my body armour and sent me staggering. My own three round burst struck sparks off the abandoned helicopter's tail rotor. Mary had been behind me, and was unable to get a shot in. She ran forward, shooting as she ran. "Damn, she's gone!"  
  
"Forget her. As long as the kid's okay," I replied. "What is it with that woman and these useless little popguns? I should be curled up and gasping for breath." I unzipped my flight suit and extracted the round. "No wonder; she's using hollowpoints, the bitch!"  
  
"You okay?" Chloe asked me. I nodded.  
  
"I'll live, kiddo. Now let's see if we can find your mum and dad, wherever they've bloody gone!"  
  
Mary glared at me in a very Elaine-esque manner. "Watch the language, Dave."  
  
"Nothing she hasn't heard before," I replied mildly. Chloe's immediate family were what my grandmother, God rest her soul, would have referred to as: 'Rough. Not really our sort of people, dear.' You can guess the rest.  
  
There was another fusillade of shots. "That'll be Daddy," Chloe concluded happily.  
  
Several machine guns began to go off. I began to get a mite concerned.  
  
"That doesn't sound like..."  
  
A very large transport helicopter loomed above us. "Ohh, SHIT!" the three of us chorused. I raised my rifle and sprayed the helicopter, but my bullets skittered harmlessly off the sides. A torrent of gunfire answered.  
  
"Head for the plane! Go, go, go!" We scrambled aboard, and I tried frantically to get the engines started. Mary swung the dorsal turret around and opened fire on the helicopter. There was a violent concussion, and gravel showered the windscreen. "That's not good!" I remarked.  
  
"They're using rockets or something. Get us outta here, goddamit!"  
  
"Working on it," I replied, opening both throttles and kicking in the afterburners. Aurora can generally take off on ground effect at about 80% power, but that assumes a two hundred yard runway. I had about half that distance to work with here.  
  
"This one's going to be pretty close. Hang on!" We cleared a low hill by less than a metre, rockets exploding to either side. "Right," I growled, deploying the missile pylons. "Where are you, you little..."  
  
"Heatseeker launched! Break right!" Mary warned. I swore, dropping half a dozen flares and banking hard. "So it's like that, is it?" My forward guns blazed at the helicopter, to no apparent effect. I swung past, getting ready to finish it with a Sidewinder, but the Radar Warning Reciever began stridently blaring at me.  
  
"Shit, somebody just lit us up!" I glanced at the radar. "Christ, fighters! Where the hell did they come from?"  
  
The klaxon notched up three octaves and fifteen decibels as a missile launched. "Oh, just great!" I activated my jammers and dropped to treetop height. Radar doesn't work to well near the ground, especially in hilly terrain like this; too many back echoes from the ground. Between that and the heavy jamming -and the Aurora Borealis has jamming systems way ahead of anything the military are using, a side benefit of being co-designed by somebody with a PHD in electromagnetic physics- the missiles would struggle to home in on us.  
  
I hoped.  
  
"Hello any callsign, this is Sparrow one. I'm under fire and heavily outnumbered. Requesting assistance!" My only reply was an earsplitting whine. "Bastards are jamming the radio!" I cursed. "We are in really big trouble!"  
  
Will stared at his radar screen. "Where the hell did they come from? You seeing this, Lyra?"  
  
"Yeah. Something's going on over there. We'd better check it out. I've got a bad feeling about this."  
  
The two aircraft turned in unison and headed towards the unknown radar signatures. Will stared at his screen, noting that somebody's ECM was turned on. "There's definitely a firefight going on," he mused. "Sparrow two to Sparrow one, what's your position, over? Aah!" He cried out as the screech of jamming assaulted his ears. He finally obtained a visual.  
  
"Junkers 578s," he breathed. "I should've known..." He armed his AA-12s and sought a lock. A glance to his left revealed that Lyra was doing the same. "Fox one, fox one," he said to himself out of professional habit, as there was nobody to hear over the screech of jamming.  
  
Two fighters were plucked out of the sky and crashed in flames. The others swung around, their pilots scanning the sky in confusion. Mrs Coulter swore, and seized command of one door gun. It was a thirty millimetre weapon, with a fairly low rate of fire but a lot of punch. She aimed it in the direction of the missiles. "Where are you, you... Oh, HELL!"  
  
"Boo," Lyra said dryly, opening fire with her guns. The helicopter veered, the door gunners struggling to aim at their tormentor.  
  
"Two more MiG-29s approaching from the north!" the pilot warned. "We're badly outmatched; Junkers 578s don't stand a chance against those!"  
  
Mrs Coulter swore viciously. "Get us back to the portal, and order the fighters to cover our retreat. Let's just hope they don't pursue."  
  
The helicopter broke away and dashed hell for leather out of the combat. The surviving fighters gave the matter some thought, then engaged their afterburners and began the runup to Drive jumps.  
  
"Let 'em go," I ordered. "We got Chloe, and John'll turn up sooner or later. Huh, speak of the Devil..."  
  
The Mi-28 appeared from behind a ridge, and fired a burst past the transport helicopter's nose. "Drop your landing gear and follow me," John ordered over the distress frequency. "I really won't need much convincing to shoot you down."  
  
The door gun returned fire, forcing the gunship to bank sideways. "Steady on, Marissa," John remarked. "I've got your boyfriend tied up in the back."  
  
"Yeah, we've got one source of information. Why bother taking HER prisoner?" Lyra said nastily. "by the way, do you two mind explaining why you dashed off like that?"  
  
"The plan was that Isobel would hold Asriel at gunpoint and offer an exchange. I'd be hiding elsewhere and nail her once the swap had taken place. It was all going more or less to plan until that flying APC turned up. I'd come without escort so as not to make her suspicious, but you can see where that got me."  
  
"Okay, but let us know next time, so we can get you out of trouble a bit easier."  
  
The helicopter took advantage of the distraction to make a break for it, but we weren't THAT distracted. I'd never seen six air-to-air missiles all hit a target at once, and it's quite something. There wasn't much left to hit the ground, and what DID was scattered over a radius of about three miles.  
  
"Well, that's that then. Come on, let's head back to base."  
  
"So," I said once we were back at our temporary headquarters, "our next objective is the City of Angels. Not that there's many of them about there, of course."  
  
"We should have been ready to go by now, except the transports haven't turned up yet," Eddie grumbled. "Ever get the feeling you're the only halfway organised person in an organisation?"  
  
"Nah, Frank's pretty good when there's readies involved. Wonder what's gone wrong?"  
  
"Give it another two hours, then we're going to look for him." 


	8. An Unexpected Complication, With The Ini...

Author's Note: I've had something of a rethink about who I'd like to see in the film version. You may remember that I suggested Dominic Keating for the character of Dave. I now feel that Julian Barrett (see ) would be better suited for the role.  
  
Frank didn't turn up after two hours, and I took Aurora to find out why. I took John, Trish and Eddie as extra security, along with two of the J-Team as gunners. We considered that Chloe was safer with the others, given John's and my knack for attracting trouble.  
  
"I'm going to land off the coast and break out the inflatable; Aurora's too distinctive to risk setting down at any airfield. Once we're on dry land we'll find some transport and go looking for Frank. Oh, and leave your shoulder arms behind; sidearms only, okay?"  
  
"You sure?" asked Trish. "If he's in trouble..."  
  
I sighed. "Look, we're trying to keep a low profile, and if they link you to Frank then he'll be in even deeper shit than when he got nabbed for drug running back in '04."  
  
"He's right," John agreed. "We'll do everything we can to avoid engaging the enemy on this one. The heavy stuff isn't going to make that too easy. I'd be happier with my G3 along for the ride, but it's sort of noticeable, you know?"  
  
"Oh, well. I'm still going to feel nervous without my MP5."  
  
Mary and I shrugged, and I engaged the afterburners whilst she primed the jump drive.  
  
"Targeting, targeting... locked. Correct five degrees to starboard."  
  
"Five degrees starboard, roger. Jump speed in ten seconds."  
  
"Pre-jump sequence complete, activate when ready."  
  
"Okay, hold tight everybody!" I activated the jump drive. There was the usual blinding flash, and the sensation of the aircraft flying through several layers of cardboard and polystyrene. Me and the old squadron once seriously considered trying this, and were only prevented by A: scarcity of either material at sea and B: the CO threatening us with dishonourable discharges if we endangered HM military equipment in such a reckless fashion. This goes to show just how incredibly boring a naval career can be when there's no wars going on.  
  
"Right, here goes," I said to myself, inflating the Zodiac. "Climb in, folks." We scrambled aboard, and I started up the outboard.  
  
"Okay, see you later. Try and keep out of trouble!" Mary called as we moved away.  
  
"Yeah, you too! Right, hold tight you lot!" I opened the throttle all the way, and sent us jetting off at fifty miles an hour.  
  
"Um, Dave?" John yelled at me as we approached a large swell. I just grinned. "Dave? Dave! DAVE! Ohhh, shi-i-i-i-i-i-t!" We left the surface of the water, flew for a few yards and landed in a trough, whereupon we began climbing another wave.  
  
"You are off your bloody rocker!" John informed me. Everybody else was too petrified to speak.  
  
"Oh, complain if you get killed!" I replied.   
  
"I'll hold you to that!"  
  
We beached the boat on a dramatic but bleak stretch of Welsh coastline, covering it in camouflage netting. "Right, according to the map there's a village with a station three miles to the south. Best start walking."  
  
"Terrific. Did we have to make landfall in the middle of nowhere?" John complained, stripping his pistol and poking a cotton bud down the barrel. "Not that I couldn't do with the exercise, but three miles?"  
  
"Only safe landing spot with decent cover," I replied. "Come on, the sooner we start...."  
  
The sooner we could sit in a decrepit station waiting for a grubby and crowded two-coach Sprinter of roughly the same vintage as me, as it turned out.  
  
Another three hours later, we reached Northampton. From there it was an hour-long trip by taxi. I was entirely unsurprised to see John manhandling a long package into the boot.  
  
"Open that without a VERY good reason and there'll be trouble," I warned, but with little conviction. My attempts to call Frank on my mobile had been met with a 'number unavailable' message every time. It might be a technical fault -it happened often enough back when I worked with him- but it might also be something else altogether.  
  
"A little paranoia can be healthy," Eddie replied. "Come on, let's go."  
  
When we arrived, Watson Air was seemingly deserted, and the door was locked. I peered suspiciously through the glass.  
  
"Hmm. I can't see any sign of a forced entry. John, you and Trish check the hangars. Eddie, come on round the back with me."  
  
We found a window smashed in, and climbed through. The office beyond was riddled with bullet holes, and quite a few bloodstains. "Christ, somebody must've had an M60 or something," Eddie said in astonishment. He drew the shotgun from the scabbard across his back, shrugging off the old trenchcoat he'd been wearing. I drew my Beretta.  
  
"Come on, we'd better check the rest of the building." We did, and it was the same story. I wondered where the bodies were, and if Frank had been one of them. We exited via the front door, and encountered John, who was being sick.  
  
"We found the bodies nailed to the hangar wall," he explained once he'd stopped retching. "Jesus, there goes my image!" It was a weak and rather tasteless joke, but I could see he was trying to disguise how badly rattled he was. "We found this as well." I read the note he handed me: 'Mess with me and mine, and you and yours can expect this kind of thing. Metatron. PS: Most of them were already dead when my associates nailed them up. I'm not a complete bastard.' Oh yeah?I thought to myself, slowly shredding the note. "Let's get out of here. If the cops find us here they'll think WE did it."  
  
"Right. Oh, crap. Look!" A car was pulling up. We hastily tried to conceal our weapons as it rolled up, and the driver got out.  
  
"Hi, Dave. I've just got back; crisis up at the Stanstead office. What's up?"  
  
"See for yourself. In there," John replied unsteadily. "They're all dead."  
  
"WHAT?!"  
  
"Long story. Can we discuss this elsewhere?" I all but bundled him into his car, and we tore off. I rang the mobile number marked 'Al B', a contraction of Aurora's registration and radio callsign, AB 301. It connected to a SIM card that I plumbed into Aurora's communications gear at the same time as the iPod.  
  
"Mary, be ready to take off in a couple of hours. Metarton's people wiped out our transport pilots and everybody in the offices. The hangar's like a bloody slaughterhouse."  
  
"Jesus! Okay, I'll be ready. See you in two hours."  
  
"Dave, what the hell is going on? And who's this Metatron character?"  
  
I wasn't feeling up to explaining, and seriously doubted that Frank would believe it. "If I tell you, you'll think I'm insane."  
  
He sighed. "I've seen your pals open a portal into a parallel universe. Can you top that for weirdness?" I nodded. "Well, try me."  
  
"Okay, then. My buddies and I are trying to prevent God's spin doctor taking over not just this universe but several others, apparently with the assistance of people from one such universe which until very recently was run by the Nazis. I got mixed up in this after I agreed to help Will get to one such universe to see his girlfriend there, some fifteen years ago. How HE got mixed up in this isn't my story to tell. Happy? Good. Now get your bloody foot down!"  
  
We reached the Welsh coast in record time, and clambered aboard the Zodiac. "Hold tight!" We zipped away at Warp Two, and nearly slammed straight into Aurora's hull. "Get aboard, quickly. If the airfield was being watched..."  
  
Gunfire shredded the inflatable just as I got out. "It was!"  
  
There was a general scramble to get in the air. Frank was shoved into a cockpit seat and warned not to touch anything, whilst John stood by one of the turrets. Mary got into the copilot's seat.  
  
"All set!" I opened both throttles and sent Aurora screaming into the sky. Once we were in the air, I flipped the switch to engage combat mode. "Talk to me, people!"  
  
"Six Typhoons, no squawk," Mary replied. "Looks like a patrol. Let's hope they're monitoring the emergency frequency!"  
  
I nodded, adjusting my radio mike accordingly. "Hello any callsign, hello any callsign. This is Alpha Bravo three zero one. Highball, highball, highball. Do you acknowlege, over?"  
  
"Roger, Alpha Bravo. Sorry about that. Just try not to go supersonic overland; my mother might complain, see. Over."  
  
"Ah, thought I recognised the voice, Carrie-Anne," I laughed. Finally tired of riding pillion?"  
  
A new voice cut in. "Alpha Bravo, this is HMS Cunningham. Please land immediately, over."  
  
"Roger, Cunningham, preparing to land." I sighed deeply, switching off the radio. "Great. Think we can land alongside, rather than on the deck?"  
  
"Come ON," Frank chided me. "How many carrier landings have you done over the years? What makes this different?"  
  
"In this thing, one, which came bloody close to disaster," I replied. "And what's different is that I'm in an aircraft bigger and heavier than anything ever to operate from a carrier, including the B-25 Mitchell [Author's Note: this happened once, during the Second World War, and how the Yanks brought it off remains a mystery to me; the Mitchells barely fitted on the deck], and I don't have any arrestor gear. I trust you're still familiar with the overwater ditching proccedures I spent six months drilling into you when you insisted on coming with me to Norway in '98?"  
  
"Yes, and a fat lot of good they'd have done over the Skaggerak in October."  
  
I declined to reply, lining up for an approach I didn't want to make.  
  
"Permission to come alongside instead, over."  
  
"Negative, Alpha Bravo. We're at sea state five. Best of luck, over."  
  
Mary and I exchanged significant looks. "How come nobody's mentioned how you're not KIA any... after all?" she remarked.  
  
"Well, you know MI5," I replied with false nonchalance. "Whatever they say, take it to be the opposite."  
  
Adopting a nose high approach, I aimed to snag the thick cable strung across the carrier's deck, noting the large net erected further along. Let's hope I don't need it, and if I DO need it, let's hope it doesn't break this time!  
  
"Okay, hold tight people. There's about a million ways this can go wrong..."  
  
We hit the deck with a tooth-rattling thud, bounced, and finally caught the arrestor cable. The 'Gear Unsafe' warning light began to flash, as did the hydraulics light. I applied the brakes, and managed -barely- to gain control. I taxied up to the superstructure, out of the way of incoming planes, and began the post-landing checklist. "Okay. Frank, stay here for a minute. I've got a bad feeling about this. The rest of you, grab some guns."  
  
Frank began to object, but quietened when he saw the Nazi uniforms. A Typhoon set down nearby, and I saw that its missiles had the safety tags (much like the pin on a hand grenade, except that you can put them back in) taped in place. Carrie-Anne gave me an apologetic look as she cranked open the canopy. The next plane to land turned out to be occupied by a pilot in Luftwaffe uniform, with twin lightning flashes on his helmet.  
  
"Bastards," I muttered to myself. "We're trapped. There's no way we can take off from this thing; we'd go straight into the drink. And we're outnumbered by about six to one. Christ, we're screwed."  
  
"Dave?" said Frank. "I might have an idea. If we can get off the carrier, we've got the whole Irish sea to take off in. Now, if we can get up enough speed to use ground effect, we can glide down to the water and make a proper takeoff then. Would that work?"  
  
"Maybe, if the gear raised in time and those Typhoons don't nail us. It's worth a shot, at least. Alright, I'll need about three minutes to get ready. Think you can hold them off for that long?"  
  
"Oh, shit. Guys, look!" I followed Mary's gesture, and noted that no fewer than five antitank weapons pointing at us.  
  
I banged my head against the cockpit window. We might just have time to swivel the dorsal turret before the missiles punched holes you could put your head through in the hull and engine nacelle, but we'd never drop the gunners in time. Even if by some miracle Aurora wasn't instantly turned into a fireball, we certainly wouldn't be flying anywhere.  
  
"We're buggered," I concluded morosely.  
  
"Is that worse than being screwed, do you think?" Frank enquired innocently. I sighed. In an uncertain world, it's nice to know that at least some things never change.   
  
"Crap joke, Frank." I wrenched open the hatch, and threw my pistol out, discretely gesturing to John.  
  
"Sensible chap," a man I didn't recognise observed coolly. "So, you're William Parry's stepfather, right? I'd expected you to be a bit, well... more imposing. Chiselled, blonde good looks? A jaw you could split teak with? That sort of thing."  
  
"Just who the hell are you?" I enquired. Come on, just a little closer, you smarmy bastard...  
  
He smiled a tight little smile I felt an overwhelming desire to smash in with a good right cross. "My name isn't important right now. Now then, are there any more guns in there?"  
  
"At least one," John replied, as I stepped aside to give him a good field of fire. Our mysterious new friend smiled the tight little smile again, apparently unfazed by the assault rifle two feet from his face. "Stand your men down and start walking backwards, or I homogenise your brain," John growled. For somebody with Asperger's, he can be a surprisingly good communicator.  
  
"Pull your trigger and they'll pull theirs," he replied reasonably. I simply raised one eyebrow.  
  
John tossed a grenade towards the rocket launcher crew, who'd been watching the exchange with interest. They scattered, and Mary started the engines. I snatched my pistol from the deck, and grabbed a handful of Smiley's shirt, pulling him into a firm arm lock and shoving the gun into his ear.  
  
"I don't believe you ever told me your name," I said conversationally, dragging him into the aircraft.  
  
"Oh? I'm Metatron. Hi." I was thrown backwards by a blow that felt like it came from a sledgehammer. John opened fire, but the rounds passed through him like he was a ghost. "Son of a bitch!"  
  
Metatron leapt a thousand feet into the air, morphing into a great horned, winged... thing. I scrambled aboard Aurora, swearing to myself. How the HELL do I get myself into this kind of crazy shit?I wondered.  
  
"Dave, we gotta get outta here!" Mary yelled at me. I nodded, grabbing the controls and kicking in the afterburners. "This had better work, Frank!"  
  
We screamed across the deck and glided smoothly into the sea, and then got hit by a wave the size of a Wilson Homes 4 bedroom detached house.  
  
"Sorry, forgot it was a bit choppy," Frank said meekly as I tried to restart the flooded engines. I grabbed him by the back of the head and banged his head into the nearest bulkhead.  
  
"Come on, old girl," I whispered, pressing the start button again. "Don't let me down now... Yes!" The engines roared into life. "Thank you, Rolls-Royce Aerospace!" We took off rather awkwardly, and I hastily deployed the turrets and weapon pods.  
  
"Um, Dave, I really don't think this is a good idea!" Mary said in a worried tone.  
  
I sighted Metatron, uttered a short but heartfelt prayer, and launched all four Sidewinders. "Come on, come on... Ha, have some of that you bastard!" He staggered under the missile hits. "The whole bulletproof thing only works when you're under six foot, then," I remarked. "Here we go, everybody. This is the proverbial it!"  
  
"This is all some hugely elaborate acid flashback," Frank said in a rather wobbly voice. "This isn't happening. I'll wake up in a minute, and there'll be cool sheets."  
  
"Oh, just shut up, will you?"  
  
[Author's note: If you have a copy of that tune from the Guinness ads -you know, the one with the surfers- then put it on now]  
  
I turned the plane to face Metatron, and treated him to a two second burst from all four nose guns. He responded by breathing fire at us, scorching the keel. I switched over to rockets and shot off four in his general direction. "Come on, you bastard! That the best you can do?"  
  
His fist slammed into Aurora's wing, sending us into a spin that took me several seconds to recover from. "RIGHT!" Yelling like a maniac, I swung around and sent Aurora hurtling towards him with all weapons firing. "Come on, come on!" I finally broke off with seconds to go before a head-on collision, by which time the rocket pod was empty and the ammunition warning light was illuminated.  
  
"Dave, get us the hell out of here!" John, Mary and just about everybody else yelled at me.  
  
"Amen to that. This isn't over, you bastard..." I snarled. "Jump drive stations, everybody."  
  
The gun crews strapped exited the turrets and strapped themselves into the jumpseats (pardon the pun) I'd installed in case we flew with gunners as well as a cockpit crew. Mary ran the jump drive's warmup sequence whilst I cut in the afterburners and brought Aurora up to Mach 2.3.  
  
"Okay Frank, this can be a bit unsettling the first time around, but don't worry about the flash, the vibration or the feeling that we've flown into a brick wall. They're all normal; it's a rather brute-force technique, but it works."  
  
"This isn't helping, Dave."  
  
I sighed. "We've done this a couple of hundred times without anything ever going wrong enough to scratch the hull. Trust me, okay?" Mary tactfully didn't mention that Aurora became possibly the only aircraft to suck a weathervane into one engine after transiting over a village that hadn't been there in the world we left, not that we need worry about THAT over the sea.  
  
"Okay. But if we crashland someplace miles from anywhere then we eat you first, right?"  
  
Mary gave me the word, and I triggered the focused electromagnetic pulse that prised a fissure open wide enough to fly through, with a blinding flash and a violent sonic boom. Our kinetic energy was absorbed and bled off for reasons we still don't fully understand.  
  
"Wow!" said Frank. "You should have ripped the wings off doing that, whatever it was. Have you had any problems with metal fatigue?" He was now in full planespotter mode.  
  
"Not as many as you'd think. The manganese-titanium alloy we used for the hull is incredibly tough; it's shrugged off a near-miss from a heat-seeker. I swear, I could do an atmospheric re-entry in this baby and keep her in service."  
  
"Nice. So, what are the specs?"  
  
I grinned; sad as it is, I'm always happy to talk about Aurora. "Ten miniguns; four in the nose, two per turret. Six retractable missile hardpoints that can carry just about anything, though they're constrained by the weapon bays, and a rocket pod that drops down from the forward fuselage. Fastest level speed I've ever coaxed out of her is Mach 2.5, and the airframe tolerance is about 9G. We only need two hundred yards for a normal takeoff, and perhaps twice that for a landing; since we could wind up facing just about any terrain we needed good short-field capacity. The radar isn't spectacular in terms of range, but it's three-sixty degree."  
  
"How'd you manage that without a radar dome?"  
  
"It's all in the wing surfaces. We had to innovate a bit on account of all the jump drive gear in the nose. It didn't leave much space for radar or much else besides the guns, and it was touch and go there for a while. The FLIR and low light TV camera had to go on an external mount, and we mounted them coaxially with the targeting optics for the jump drive. One problem down, about ten thousand to go."  
  
"Neat trick, that. So how much of the avionics are off-the-shelf components?"  
  
"About eighty five percent, at a rough estimate. The jump drive, radar and landing gear are custom-built, as well as most of the interior fittings; that was mostly a DIY job." Frank winced. I once destroyed £500-worth of carpet and £80-worth of wallpaper installing bookshelves for him as a favour. Well, how was I meant to know there was a water pipe there?  
  
I tried the landing gear, but the warning light came on again. "Damn. We'll have to set down on water somewhere. Has the inertial navigator reset?"  
  
"No dice. We'll have to look for a landmark and work out where we are. What's the fuel like?"  
  
I checked. "About another four hours in the air. Which world are we in, anyhow?"  
  
"Number seventeen." Lyra's world. We'd established a numerical system before the first test of the jump drive, our own world being number one, and each one we isolated from imagery of the fissures getting a number after that. It actually didn't tell us anything until after we'd visited all forty-odd we catalogued, but once we'd started making regular forays it became invaluable.  
  
We swung inland. I scanned the map and tried to figure out a place we coukd set down and get more fuel. "Kerosene works, more or less. It's hard on the turbine blades, though."  
  
"It'll have to do. Where are you going to find proper jet fuel around here?" Mary pointed out. "It's not gonna mix too good with what's already in the tanks, either."  
  
"Well, it's a bloody long walk to Germany if we don't," I remarked sourly. "While we're about it we'd better look at getting some more ammunition. That IS going to be a bit tough, although thirty calibre's thirty calibre. Right, I'm heading for the Fens. Once we're on the ground then maybe we can arrange some transportation for our various logistic needs, as well as some fuel."  
  
We landed outside the town, and explained what had happened. "Well, I might have a contact," John Faa admitted. "A young man by the name of Justin Coulter crews a transport zepplin out of the London Aerodock. I'll try and get hold of him."  
  
"Coulter?" I said after a long pause. "That's got to be a coincidence!" 


	9. Well, That About Wraps It Up For God's S...

Well, folks, here it is. The finale...  
  
Metatron sighed, and watched as his fallen angels deposited Asriel in front of him. "Well, it can safely be said that your bright idea about kidnapping that child has failed miserably. How bad were our losses?"  
  
"The Berghoff, eighty personnel and just about everything we had stored there. I am going to personally tear Savage's head off with my bare hands!" Asriel groused. "I'm just sorry he won't be able to then watch where I'm going to SHOVE it!"  
  
"Temper, temper, my friend. Now, I've no interest in wasting time on recriminations, and you're too useful to dispose of. How much did they learn from you?"  
  
"Very little, besides the fact that you're base of operations is in Citigazze; they hadn't fully interrogated me yet. That maniac West was all set to use electrodes or something. They got Marissa, as I'm sure you're aware."  
  
Metatron nodded. "I ran across Savage not long ago. We've grounded their transport aircraft, but that infernal silver thing's still at large. Took a few potshots at me, even."  
  
"Doesn't surprise me," Asriel replied bitterly. "He's on a mission from God, after all. I still haven't forgiven him for what he did to my face back in the Arctic, fifteen years ago. Am I holding a grudge for too long, do you think?"  
  
"Probably. I wonder what those lunatics are up to now?"  
  
Justin Fairfax-Coulter was pleasant, obviously educated and bore a distinct resemblance to Marissa. I struggled not to be disconcerted.  
  
"So you're David Savage? Good to meet you. You have a commission for my vessel?"  
  
I nodded. "Sort of military. Quite dangerous. Very well-paid. Are you authorised to accept contracts on behalf of the ship's master?"  
  
"Sadly not. Can you be somewhat more specific?" I explained the salient details, and he wandered off to place a telephone call. I exchanged silent looks with John Faa.  
  
"Yes, remarkable, isn't it? I've never dared ask, but I assume he's a fairly close relative. He knows Lyra fairly well, though." I made a mental note to ask my stepdaughter-in-law about this later. Justin returned, grinning. "Captain Matthews says he'll accept your cargo for no less than three hundred pounds, plus expenses." I nodded instantly. We had nearly ten times that in our account here; we'd deposited money everywhere, just in case. The patent on the manganese-titanium alloy used for the Knife and Aurora's hull (I wonder who REALLY invented it?) was paying several million pounds annually into numbered accounts in Zurich, Vienna and Lictenstein, and we converted large amounts into sovereigns; gold is acceptable virtually anywhere.  
  
We made some hasty arrangements for getting the airship Spirit of Free Enterprise to the required region of Germany whilst Mary and I returned to our own world and borrowed Watson Air's sole heavy lifter, the Shorts Belfast. Frank would oversee loading of everything that could be crammed aboard Spirit whilst we made our way to the portal that they'd hopefully opened for us by then. We'd also stock up on ammunition for Aurora; I've finally overcome my ingrained predjudice from NATO days against Russian ordnance, and consented to load up with the missiles intended for the MiGs.  
  
"Okay, I can see the plane," I hissed into the radio. "No police that I can see, and I think the tower's unoccupied. I wonder if the bodies have been found yet?"  
  
"Who knows? Okay, the plane should be fuelled up and ready to roll. We'll join you at the rendezvous coordinates. Aurora out." I approached the tower with caution, and spotted a man standing outside it having a smoke. "Hey, do you know if the police said anything about leaving the planes alone? Stanstead want the Belfast in Germany to pick up a load as soon as possible." By then I'd spotted the 'Police Line- Do Not Cross' tape across the hangar door.  
  
"Nah, mate; all yours. Nasty business, wasn't it? The guys in the tower didn't hear a thing."  
  
"Yeah," I agreed, lighting a cigarette of my own. A few minutes later I was in the air.  
  
I was determined to act as naturally as possible; in Hollywood I'd fly low, dodging interceptor aircraft and doing a load of stuff you can't really do in an aeroplane about the size of a pair of the few mid-90s Wilson Homes products that haven't fallen down yet. [Author's Note: I live in one of these, so I know what I'm on about!] Exciting as that might be, it was far simpler to communicate with air traffic controllers, fly at legal altitudes and generally act normal. Whilst I'd been rather spoiled by Aurora's handling characteristics, I was no stranger to heavy cargo planes and soon got used to the old Belfast. The airframe was nearly thirty years old, but the engines and avionics were bang up to date, and it handled pretty well for its size with an empty cargo hold.  
  
Three hours later I arrived at the rendezvous point, a disused military airstrip close to the old East German border, which had been mothballed in the nineties. Aurora was waiting for me, and we shared a cup of tea before heading off again. I also took the time for a cigarette break before setting off on the final stage of the journey.  
  
This part WAS going to involve some skilled piloting. A portal had been opened for us at the top of some desperately high and remote mountain where there wasn't much chance of us being spotted, but flying through it there would take a lot of skill and even more nerve. If I made the tiniest mistake I'd pile into a cliff face or tear a wing off against a peak, and even if my plane had been fitted with an ejector seat -and right now I really wished it did- I'd be very lucky indeed to get out alive. I'd be nervous trying it in my old Harrier, in which I'd done plenty of low level stuff, let alone this brick. Not for the first time, I asked myself why I'd ever agreed to help out with that hare-brained project Mary'd emailed me about a lifetime or more ago.  
  
I spotted the distinctive shimmer in the air caused by Dust interacting with a strong electromagnetic field, and dived for the centre. The air currents from the jagged mountain range bounced my plane around like a hang-glider in a hurricane. I wrestled the Belfast onto a fairly even keel and passed through the portal with about a centimetre to spare, immediately pulling up to get away from the violent ground effect. "Next time, set it up someplace I can just taxi through, please!" I implored the team by radio, turning towards the Berghoff, where they'd helpfully provided some smoke and flares to aid landing in the reduced visibility caused by darkening skies and a rising ground mist. It was still a rather hair-raising experience setting down, and I immediately availed myself of a stiff drink.  
  
Somehow, the Spirit was fully loaded. It was not a thing of great beauty, a huge and cumbersome arrangement of two gasbags and a deep central superstructure with a crane mounted at one end. To my mild surprise, it had a dozen-odd Maxim guns at various strategic locations. Evidently she was no stranger to hazards besides the weather.  
  
"Good enough for beating off a few clapped-out biplane fighters flown by amateurs, but one missile could blow her out of the sky," was Will's rather pessimistic verdict. "And she'll barely make thirty knots an hour." I can't remember exactly what that is in regular mph, but it wouldn't trigger a speed camera. Aurora and virtually any other fixed-wing aircraft would slam straight into the ground at anything below about a hundred and twenty.  
  
"It seems to me that Aurora, the fighters and the Belfast will have to form the advance party. I reckon we can cram one tank and about a hundred fighting men in the back and still take off, maybe more if we use the JATO bottles we brought along in case the transports couldn't drop everything and everyone by parachute. The drawback to all this is that we'll be waiting for a resupply for about a month. By then, Metatron could have done anything."  
  
"I've got something that might just help even the odds a bit," John informed us. "I had Mitch collect it while you were gone." He yanked the dustsheets off something behind him.  
  
I was in the military long enough to know a nuclear warhead when I saw one, and it was a big one at that. "Oh, SHIT, John! Where in God's name did you get that thing?"  
  
"You don't want to know. It's quite an old one; from the old SS-18." I looked at it carefully, and narrowed my eyes. The SS-18, a long obselete ICBM, normally carried several warheads to scatter across numerous targets. However, that sort of warhead is actually surprisingly small; you'd fit one in the boot of a normal saloon car, though the warhead's yield is a respectable 500 kilotons. This, however, was so large it'd had to be slung beneath the Huey to get it here. I remembered then that there was another variant, designed for destroying command centres deep underground such as Cheyenne Mountain, which carried a single warhead. Its yield was TWENTY FIVE MEGATONS.  
  
"John, forget it. I am NOT deploying that doomsday device of yours. Take it back... no, DON'T take it back where you found it. Put it somewhere very, very safe, like the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean."  
  
"Look, if you can think of a faster and more reliable way of disposing of Metatron then I'm all ears. If he's within a radius of about five miles-"  
  
"Look, I said no! I am NOT using strategic weapons in a populated area, not even to get this bastard. Besides, what am I supposed to do with the bloody thing? Chuck it out the back of the Belfast?"  
  
"Not exactly," Frank replied. "We've obtained some remote control apparatus and a TV camera system. All you have to do is lure Metatron to a safe distance from anywhere, steer the Belfast to within about a mile or so and trigger the bomb by remote, and Metatron's reduced to his component molecules by instant sunrise. The enemy degenerate into a leaderless mob and we arrive in time to mop up. Dead easy!"  
  
"Too bloody easy," I replied, slightly mollified by the fact that John wasn't actually expecting me to destroy an entire city, but still somewhat suspicious. "The kill radius of those things is close to fifty miles. An aircraft any closer than that would be knocked out of the sky."  
  
"So I program a three second delay into the detonator and you jump out just before it goes off." It was typical of John's plans; reckless, dangerous, but just about daft enough to actually work.  
  
"Okay, let's do it!" And if it goes tits-up I'll personally break both your legs!I added mentally.  
  
We took off shortly thereafter, with the Belfast under remote control from Aurora. I took a deep breath, trying not to appear nervous. "Everybody's radio working alright?" I got four confirmations. "Alright, the portal's dead ahead. Wish us luck, everybody!"  
  
Justin came on the radio. "Will, bring my little sister home in one piece, alright?"  
  
"SISTER?" I half exploded.  
  
"Long story. Justin, when have I ever needed looking after?" The lighthearted banter continued until we were out of range. I decided I'd get the full story once Metatron was safely dead.  
  
It was a long flight, with Aurora mostly on autopilot whilst Mary and I took turns to watch the Belfast. It had been fitted with an extremely crude terrain-following system based on scavenged parts of an old laser designator, but we were disinclined to completely trust it. Our gunners consisted of two Russians and Frank, who'd insisted on getting a piece of the action. I'd put him in the rear turret, where at least there was no chance of him shooting holes in our own fuselage.   
  
What a way to go to war!  
  
John glanced at the Spirit with deep foreboding. It was huge, slow and full of explosive hydrogen gas, and his entire fighting force was crammed aboard it.  
  
"Of all the transport arrangements he could make..." he grumbled, strapping on his helmet. "Oh, well, if this is what we've got to do it with then this is what we're going to do it with!"  
  
"Three helicopters," Sandy remarked grimly. "Thirty air-to-air missiles. Twelve gun emplacements. That's ALL we've got."  
  
"Tell me about it," John replied in the same tone, clambering into the Havoc's cockpit.  
  
By a masterful feat of improvisation for which the J-Team's technical staff were justly famous, the launch tubes for the third-generation AT-19 'Sawtooth' anti-armour missile had been filled with elderly SA-7 heat-seekers roughly analagous to the ubiqitous Stinger. The Havoc carried a quartet of four-tube racks plus four rather more modern AA-11 'Archer' heatseekers on a rough par with the Sidewinder, mounted in pairs on each wingtip. The Hueys (actually a Bell 212, the civilian development of the original UH-1 Iriquois and with little in common with the original, but still the Huey to everybody) carried six Archers apiece in addition to a pair of air-to-surface rocket pods, two .50 calibre machine guns and a belly-mounted 23mm cannon in a fully rotating turret. They were arguably the better armed aircraft, since the Havoc carried only assorted air-to-air missiles and its 25mm chain gun.  
  
"Kestrel One to Spirit. Ready to go, over."  
  
"Understood, Kestrel One. We're starting our engines now. We'll have her underway in about three minutes, and up to best speed in just over ten. We're pretty heavy in the sky, over."  
  
"Understood. Spinning up, out." John engaged both engines and hauled on the collective. The Mil-28 lifted gently from the moorland and hovered whilst the Spirit of Free Enterprise engaged its eight engines and began to inch forward. The Hueys took up formation on either side of it, and John manoevred the Havoc above and behind.  
  
They travelled for several hours in tense silence, with eyes glued to infared detection systems and radar warning recievers. John was forced to wear flying gloves, which he usually eschewed, as his hands were sweating so badly he could hardly grip the control column.  
  
"We'd have been better off getting a Zeus-23 or something for air defence and WALKING," Sandy remarked.  
  
"Yeah, except for those soul-sucking ghost things they told us about," John replied. "It really would be quicker!" He broke a piece off a bar of chocolate and bit a square off. "Anything on the scope?"  
  
"Nothing but a flock of birds. At least we're not moving fast enough to suck one into an engine intake," he said with a slightly forced smile. It vanished as he saw something else. "Contact at two o'clock, very faint but moving fast. Becoming clearer... two contacts, very hot. Might be jets."  
  
"Right. This is Kestrel One, we have probable incoming. Everybody get ready."  
  
There was a burst of frantic activity in the small convoy. The Spirit's gunners fired quick test bursts, and men with rifles crowded the decks. What they thought they'd achieve with small arms against attack jets John had no idea.  
  
"Visual contact! Two fighters, dead ahead!" yelled one of the Spirit's nose gunners, opening fire. Two SA-7s streaked away from the Havoc. The pair of unrecognisable fighters swerved reflexively, just as John had hoped, and presented their ultra-hot exhausts to the missiles. One of them was hit, and went into a terminal spin as one engine was knocked out. The crew ejected seconds before it hit the ground. The remaining fighter swung around and floored it, outrunning the remaining missile.  
  
"Must've been a reconissance flight; we splashed the escort, I think. We were lucky," Sandy concluded.  
  
"Yeah. I think I might have put a couple through that guy's canopy," Justin added. "Don't think I did much else to him, though."  
  
"Yeah. Unless you hit the pilot or a round gets sucked into an engine fighters like that won't even notice. They won't be able to make a decent gun pass with a faceful of lead, though."  
  
"They can hose that thing without even coming into range," Sandy observed sourly over the intercom.  
  
"Yeah, but if I tell them that then morale's had it. Anything else on the screen?"  
  
"Just our friend the recce plane going very fast indeed in the opposite direction from us. Give them a few minutes to get the planes up, and then we'll have real problems." In his mind's eye, John pictured men running towards fighters whilst ground crews got them started up, and radar-homing missiles plucking helicopters from the sky.  
  
"We're all going to die, aren't we?"  
  
"Probably, but on the other hand we're in situations like this all the time, and you haven't got us killed yet. Remember the Belize job?"  
  
"That wasn't my fault!" John complained good-naturedly. "How was I supposed to know that Britain had put all those extra troops in, or that Guatemala would invade just as we reached the border?"  
  
"I was actually thinking of when you and Charlie mooned all those paratroopers."  
  
The howls of laughter from the speaker indicated that Sandy had switched on the radio. "Bastard!" said John, trying not to laugh himself. "It seemed like a good idea after five pints of Red Stripe, okay?"  
  
"Yeah, yeah-" Sandy swore explosively in Russian, Czech, English and German. "Fighters, a dozen of them!"  
  
There was a general ouburst of uncontrolled panic as the radar warning recievers aboard all three helicopters began screeching. "They're locking onto Spirit!" Isobel yelled.  
  
"Oh, bollocks!" John opened up the throttles all the way. "Sandy, give me the missiles. Use the cannon, try and hit the enemy missiles as they launch. Leave the fighters to me."  
  
"John, you're not in bloody Airwolf! You can't dogfight with jet fighter aircraft in a helicopter! This is suicide!"  
  
"If you have a better idea..." John replied grimly.  
  
I knew he should have got a single seater. At least then he wouldn't get ME killed as well!  
  
"Come on, you bastards!" John yelled, opening fire. Sandy muttered something under his breath, and began firing at the incoming missiles. The crews of the other two helicopters exchanged looks with each other, and charged.  
  
"You do realise that we're all going to die, don't you?" Isobel said conversationally. John ducked reflexively as a missile skimmed past the Havoc's cockpit.  
  
"Does rather seem that way, yes," John admitted rather pessimistically.  
  
The enemy fighters were taken by surprise. They hadn't expected a determined offensive from the helicopters escorting the zepplin, and were caught somewhat off guard. When the big attack helicopter suddenly fired off every missile it was carrying in one salvo, panic began to set in.  
  
The SA-7 isn't an especially accurate missile, but at ranges of less than a mile it works more than adequately. Fighters began to explode. The survivors tried to rally at a safe distance, but the Hueys fired their own heat seekers. The fighter pilots decided that they'd had enough, and made a run for it.  
  
"Kestrel One to Spirit, what's your status?" John asked after a while, once the cheering had dies down.  
  
"We took a missile hit and suffered some damage, but we're still in the air. We'll need to pick up one of our gunners, though; poor bugger had to jump." John was alarmed, to put it mildly, at the damage that Spirit had taken. A missile had hit one of the twin gasbag bodies head-on, obliterating the gunner's station and igniting the huge hydrogen balloon behind. Fortunately, they were separated by steel panels and were designed to vent outwards in case of explosion, but the wooden frames of the outer skin were reduced to a blackened skeleton. Black steaks radiated backwards along the fireproof covering, and the metal parts were seriously distorted.  
  
John called a halt to make temporary repairs and rearm the helicopters, and extract the unfortunate gunner from the pine tree in which he'd become entangled. An M60 normally fitted to one of the Hueys for support of ground troops was borrowed from the hold and rigged on a makeshift pintle in the gunner's station; the internal fixtures had survived mostly intact, but the Maxim was a twisted wreck embedded in the rear bulkhead.  
  
"She'll never take another hit like that," John said worriedly. The steel partition was visibly dented, and peppered with shrapnel impacts. "How soon can we get her back in the air?"  
  
"About three days, if you want to make headway worth a damn," Captain Matthews replied grimly. "Right now we're as aerodynamic as a brick, not to mention the loss of bouyancy. We can press on, but I'll be lucky to coax anything much above walking pace out of the old girl in this state. We've got the tools and templates for cutting new frames, and yards of spare canvas, but it's a painfully slow job." John cursed Metatron, his allies and his own bad luck.  
  
"Oh well, can't be helped. Three days won't make much difference anyway. By the time we get there it'll be settle, one way or another."  
  
"God, do I need a smoke! I think that's the city coming up. Deploying turrets and weapon pods, and let's hope I don't turn out to have been right all along about Soviet missiles!" Aurora was carrying four AA-11s in addition to six ordinary 500lb bombs on multiplier hardpoints; not even a Soviet design team could mess THEM up. I deliberately ignored the chorus of abuse from the Russians in the turrets. "Beginning my run. Jack, Yuri, keep an eye on the Belfast; she's orbiting five miles out."  
  
"Will do!" The two MiG-29s broke away to guard our ace in the hole. I swallowed hard, and opened the throttles. I felt a tap on my right shoulder, which surprised me as Mary was sitting on my left. I looked, and saw a mass of silvery hair framing a beautiful face, whose owner winked at me. I grinned, and began a strafing run.  
  
"What the-? You!" Metatron roared. "I'm getting tired of this!" He transformed into a huge, behorned and bewinged monstrosity and leapt at the silver aircraft. It twisted away, turrets hosing him with pinpricks of lead. Metatron hurled bolts of lightning at one of the smaller fighters, sending it into a spin. The pilot recovered and launched a couple of missiles, which blew apart one of the buildings that Metatron's forces had commandeered.  
  
The Aurora Borealis had released its bombs and was heading out to sea. Metatron followed, trusting his own aerial forces to handle two fighters.  
  
"It's working! Is the Belfast in position yet?" I asked, engaging the afterburners.  
  
"Near as dammit. Switching to jump drive control. Targeting a suitable fissure... locked. Three degrees left, down two. Okay, perfect."  
  
"Right. Arming the weapon. Threshold in thirty seconds. Is he still behind us?"  
  
Mary checked in the rear camera. "Yeah, and gaining fast. Huh?" I glanced in her screen. Several thousand witches had appeared in the skies over Citigazze, and were raining arrows on the enemy positions.  
  
"Well it's about time they... Shit!" A battery of antiaircraft guns had just wiped out about fifty of them in one short burst. "Now I see why they stayed well out of it. Threshold in twenty seconds." Two MiGs passed on either side of us; Jack and Yuri getting out of the way.  
  
"Roger. Correct one degree left... good. Gunners, strap in back there! Weapon is armed and ready. John DID program the three-second delay, right?"  
  
"I watched him do it. Threshold in ten, nine..."  
  
Metatron noticed the transport orbiting above him, and shrugged.  
  
"...eight, seven..."  
  
Asriel noticed the transport plane on a radar screen in the command centre, and ordered a fighter be diverted to shoot it down. He had a bad feeling about it.  
  
"...six, five..."  
  
A Ju-578 launched a long range radar homing missile towards the transport.  
  
"...four, three, two, one... MARK!"  
  
I hit the jump button, causing two things to happen. The fissure in front of us cracked open, and the exceptionally large nuclear warhead began a very short countdown.  
  
The missile was just over a kilometre from the plane when the bomb detonated. Metatron was about three hundred metres away. The blast of hyperenergetic gamma and X-rays heated the air to a temperature hotter than the core of the sun, causing a massive expansion wave that turned the air in front of it into something thicker than steel. The blast front was still powerful enough to implode windows and strip tiles from roofs in the city, nearly fifty miles away. Several witches made undignified landings in the bay, and it was all the four MiG pilots could do to avoid joining them. A small tidal wave inundated the seafront.  
  
Metatron simply vanished.  
  
"Did it work? Did we get him? Did Aurora get out of the way in time?" Jack yelled, still disorientated. He pulled off his special flash-goggles. "Did anybody see what happened to Aurora?"  
  
"Jack, cool it!" Will shouted over his babbling. "We're still in a combat zone!" This was only nominally true. The remaining fighters were hesitating somewhat, as if unsure what to do. Eventually somebody seemed to take command, and they immediately jumped out. The remaining ground forces gradually ceased firing.  
  
The fighters waited, and waited, and waited. "Will?" said Lyra hesitantly. "I... I don't think they got out in time."  
  
"I know." Will's eyes began to fill with tears. "Well, say hi to Mum for me, Dave. It was fun while it last... Hey, look!"  
  
Aurora shot out of a fissure, wobbled unsteadily and made a heavy landing in the bay. The crew could be heard singing 'We Are The Champions' over the radio.  
  
"YEAH!" Will yelled. The whooping and cheering from the four pilots nearly deafened Asriel, as he switched off the radio scanner, took up an automatic rifle and ran like hell for a portal to his own world and the comfortable anonymity of lettuce farming or something. Enough, he decided, was enough.  
  
There really isn't much more to tell. The mopup operation lasted hours rather than days. Once everybody's hangover had abated we generally went our separate ways. The J-Team are still doing what they do best, despite the best efforts of every law enforcement organisation in the civilised world- even the Russians, after the new government found out about the 'borrowed' nuclear warhead; don't blame them, really. Will and Lyra continue to fly with Fleet Air Arm, whilst Jack and Carrie-Anne are now working for Frank in a freight carrying operation between my world and Lyra's; you wouldn't believe how much Nike trainers are in demand over there! Mary trained their portal generator crew, so it's more or less safe- as safe as anything Frank's involved in ever is, anyhow.  
  
As for me, I'm still flying Aurora from world to world. Rori's an excellent copilot; why she actually needs to sit in the cockpit when she's capable of incorporeally posessing the plane I'm not sure, but I'm glad of the company.  
  
Oh, by the way; Justin was Marissa's child by her actual husband, who had come to Chez Asriel with the intention of settling some scores before actually adopting Lyra. He also made provision for her in his will- what do you say to that? At least I now know how she afforded that weekend at a spa a few years back. On the subject of Asriel, we never did find out what happened to him. He seems to have had the sense to keep his head down. No doubt he'll turn up again some time in the future, but after this, I'm sure we can handle the likes of him.  
  
As for Metatron, it was never definitively established that he was killed or destroyed or whatever by the blast, but he was never heard from again. I doubt we'll ever know for sure.  
  
EPIOLOGUE  
  
Metatron sighed. It was going to take centuries to replace his corporeal form, and it had been a damn good one, too. He drifted glumly across the ephemeral plane. Where the hell had they got a nuclear warhead, anyway?  
  
"Ah, there you are. I was hoping I'd catch you." Metatron glanced up. "I know that lot up topside let you go on the condition that you couldn't take a job with us for at least the next five thousand years, but now that you're off fieldwork for a bit I've persuaded Him to make an exception," Satan continued. Metatron was mildly surprised to note that he had taken on the aspect of a large man in an expensive pinstripe suit. Man has been accused of making God in his own image, and presumably this also applies to everybody else who gets a cameo in the Good Book.  
  
"You've taken so many campaign contributions from big business you've gone native! Planning Division, is it?"  
  
"With special responsibility for Swindon, Merseyside and Greater Manchester; old Wormwood Screwtape's finally retired." As can well be imagined, Special Responsibility for the three lead contenders for 'Biggest Shithole In The United Kingdom' was a prestigious addition to one's business card in Pandemonium.  
  
Metatron grinned. "Alright, I'm in!"  
  
THE END  
  
Well folks, that's all the life wrung from this particular story arc. Ludicrosity -I think that's a word- has reached critical mass, and I'll be damned if I'll let a concept I'm more than a little proud of go the way of the Rocky films.  
  
However, spare time and circumstances permitting (ie, if I don't manage to get a job by Christmas), Justin Coulter and the airship Spirit of Free Enterprise will be getting a full-blown adventure of their own some time in the near future. Watch this category!  
  
JJ. 


End file.
